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.