r together, and that he was to pay her bills. He knew the
great thing in any tight corner was never under any circumstances to let
go. All the dangers he had ever been in, had yielded, only because he
hadn't.

It was true he had not been married before, but the same rule no doubt
held good of marriage. If he held on to it, something more bearable
would come of it. Then one could be out of the house a good deal, and
there was the regiment. He began to see his way through marriage as a
man sees his way through a gap in an awkward fence. The unfortunate part
of it was that he couldn't get through the gap unless Estelle shared his
insight.

He would have liked to put it to her, but he didn't know how; he never
had had a great gift of expression, and something had brought him up
very short in his communications with his wife.

It was so slight a thing that Estelle herself had forgotten all about
it, but to a Staines it was absolutely final. She had told the gardener
that Winn wanted hyacinths planted in the front bed. Winn hadn't wanted
a garden at all, and he had let her have her way in everything else; but
he had said quite plainly that he wouldn't on any account have
hyacinths. The expression he used about them was excessively coarse, and
it certainly should have remained in Estelle's memory. He had said, that
the bally things stank. Nevertheless, Estelle had told the gardener
that the master wanted hyacinths, and the gardener had told Winn. Winn
gazed at the gardener in a way which made him wish that he had never
been a gardener, but had taken up any other profession in which he was
unlikely to meet a glance so "nasty." Then Winn said quietly:

"You are perfectly sure, Parsons, that Mrs. Staines told you it was _my_
wish to have the hyacinths?" And the gardener had said:

"Yes, sir. She _did_ say, sir, as 'ow you 'ad a particler fancy for
them." And Winn had gone into the house and asked Estelle what the devil
she meant? Estelle immediately denied the hyacinths and the gardener.
People like that, she said, always misunderstand what one said to them.

"Very well, then," Winn replied. "He has lied to me, and must go. I'll
dismiss him at once. He told me distinctly that you had said I liked
them."

Estelle fidgeted. She didn't want the gardener to go. She really
couldn't remember what she'd said and what she hadn't said to him. And
Winn was absurd, and how could it matter, and the people next door had
hyacinths, and