The Woman

IT was April, and in his little bedroom in the Muswell Hill boarding-house, where Mrs. Morrison (assisted, as you found out later, by Miss Gertie Morrison) took in a few select paying guests, George Crosby was packing. Spring came in softly through his open window; it whispered to him tales of green hedges and misty woods and close-cropped rolling grass. "Collars," said George, trying to shut his ears to it, "handkerchiefs, ties-I knew I'd forgotten something: ties." He pulled open a drawer. "Ties, shirts-where's my list?-shirts, ties." He wandered to the window and looked out. Muswell Hill was below him, but he hardly saw it. Three weeks," he murmured. Heaven for three weeks, and it hasn't even begun yet." There was the splendour of it. It hadn't begun; it didn't begin till to-morrow. He went back in a dream to his packing. "Collars," he said, "shirts, ties-ties--"