Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/72

 depressed, but her heart had sunk as she found herself alone again, looking out on the little garden which had been such a comfort to her through the long, hot summer. In her thoughts she had facetiously called it hers, and she had criticised freely the amateur gardening of the simple old man who had pottered happily up and down the narrow path with his ubiquitous watering can. She would have made that garden like the one she loved out West, with its lilies of the valley and its wealth of sweet-scented, homely mignonette. Over in the corner where he had planted those gaudy geraniums she would have put—but she was going away the day after to-morrow to leave it all behind her. Going away, though she knew of no place to go. And she had eaten nothing for two days, and she was hungry.

That stubborn fact presented itself with malevolent persistence and would not down. She had never before been really hungry. Sometimes, after long tramps over the mountains or glorious days on the sea, she had thought she was. But the healthy appetite with which she had sat down to the table