Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/276

 neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair—a kind of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing