All that loving labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to make this confined space a thing of beauty.

Mary went out of the dark stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration for James Steadman's work.
'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able to make it like this,' she thought.

'It is such a comfort to know that so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could afford must be small.' Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was spacious as compared with the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an eligible residence.' In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old man--a very old man--sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light of the westering sun.
His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward.

His long white hair fell in thin straggling locks over the collar of his coat.

He had an old-fashioned, mummyfied aspect, and Mary thought he must be very, very old.
Very, very old! In a flash there came back upon her the memory of John Hammond's curiosity about a hoary and withered old man whom he had met on the Fell in the early morning.