She watched the motor as it drove off to the station. She had had it
opened, and had sent a number of coats and rugs with it lest Henry
should be cold. By this time she was completely tired out, having
pursued her self-imposed business down to its minutest detail, but the
consciousness that she had done everything she had to do buoyed her up
with the pleasure of virtue. Although she knew that she could not expect
the motor back for at least half-an-hour, she enveloped herself in an
old brown cape and went to sit on the little bench in the porch. The
mist had by now been completely dispersed by the sun, which had rolled
it away in curls and shavings of vapour, that clung about the trees as
though reluctant to go, and finally melted away, leaving a day full of
damp gold, with the pheasants calling in the distance along the margins
of the fields nearest to the coppices. Mrs. Martin sat in the porch with
her feet propped up on the opposite bench. She rested contentedly,
folding her old brown cloak round her, and letting her head nod under
its big black straw hat as she dozed. She looked like some old shepherd
nodding after his dinner hour. The pigeons came and pecked about under
her feet for stray grains of maize, and were joined by some chickens
from the farmyard that came scurrying across the court, the big Rhode
Island Reds and the white Wyandottes with their bright yellow legs
prinking round and squawking as all their heads met in a rush over the
same grain. Mrs. Martin smiled as she dozed, like a mother smiling
indulgently at the squabble of her children. The sunlight fell in a
sharp line across the flag-stone of the porch. Little bright drops of
moisture formed on the hairy tweed of Mrs. Martin’s cloak where her
gentle and regular breathing blew down the front of it. She had not
meant to go to sleep. She would not have believed that she could go to
sleep while she was actually waiting for the arrival of Henry. Five
years—and then, at the end of it, to sleep! But she was old, and she had
been busy all the morning, and she was tired. She slept on, with the
pigeons and chickens still pecking, quietly now, under her feet.