It was a fancy rife with poetic melancholy.
The smell of wet lilac sweeping in from a bush beneath his window made him think somehow of Joan.

He wondered in a wave of tenderness if she ferried the river too in storm and, glancing at his watch found the hour disturbing.

Unfortunately in a wing remote from Hannah's trot and bustle where save for the monotonous music of the rain, the brush of dripping trees or depressing creaks, there was no noise at all, he had as usual slept too long.

And one could never tell.

Silas's singular notion of a rising hour might prevail here.