About seven of the same evening he dismounted heavily in the by-lane outside the cottage, and pushed his machine through the wicket, a different man.

A detail declared his depression to the woman next door, who was preparing him a more substantial meal than Langholm ever thought of ordering for himself: he went straight through to his roses without changing his party coat for the out-at-elbow Norfolk jacket in which he had spent that summer and the last.
The garden behind the two cottages was all Langholm's.

The whole thing, levelled, would not have made a single lawn-tennis court, nor yet a practice pitch of proper length.

Yet this little garden contained almost everything that a garden need have.

There were tall pines among the timber to one side, and through these set the sun, so that on the hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the morning's work was done.