ch. I stroll along the wintry
brown hedge-row, and begin to pick Roger a little, scant nosegay. He
shall see how patient I am! how _un_sulky! with what sunny mildness I
can wait his leisure! I have already two or three snow-drops in my
breast, that I picked as I came through the garden. To these I add a
drooping hazel-tassel or two, and a little bit of honeysuckle-leaf, just
breaking greenly into life. This is all I can find--all the scentless
first-fruits of the baby year.

It is ten minutes past the due time now. Again I listen intently, as I
listened yesterday, for his coming. There is a sound now; but, alas! not
the right one! It is the rumbling of an approaching carriage. A
pony-chaise bowls past. The occupants are acquaintances of mine, and we
bow and smile to each other. As long as they are in sight, I affect to
be diligently botanizing in the hedge. When they have disappeared, I sit
down on a heap of stones, and take out my watch for the hundredth time;
a whole quarter of an hour!

"He does not relish the notion of his wife's tramping up and down this
muddy road by herself, does not he?" say I, speaking out loud, and
gnashing my teeth.

Then I hurl my little posy away from me into the mud, as far as it will
go. What has become of my patience? my sunny mildness? Then, as the
recollection of the velvet-gown and mob-cap episode recurs to me, I
repent me, and, crossing the road, pick up again my harmless catkins and
snow-drops, and rearrange them. I have hardly finished wiping the mire
from the tender, lilac-veined snow-drop petals, before I hear his voice
in the distance, in conversation with some one. Clearly, Delilah is
coming to see the last of him! I expect that she mostly escorts them to
the gate. In my present frame of mind, it would be physically impossible
for me to salute her with the bland civility which society enjoins on
people of our stage of civilization. I therefore remain sitting on my
heap.

Presently, Roger emerges alone. He does not see me at first, but looks
up the road, and down the road, in search of me. When, at last, he
perceives me, no smile--(as has ever hitherto been his wont)--kindles
his eyes and lips. With unstirred gravity, he approaches me.

"Here you are _at last_!" cry I, scampering to meet him, but with a
stress, from which human nature is unable to refrain, on the last two
words.

"At last?" he repeats in a tone of surprise; "am I over
time?--Yes"--(looking at his watch)-