Some of the more enterprising inhabitants kept fowls; but there was not much enterprise in Wistaria Terrace.
Earlier inhabitants had planted the gardens with lilac and laburnum bushes, with gooseberries and currants.

There were no flowers there that did not sow themselves year after year.

They were damp, grubby places, but even there an imaginative child like Mary Gray could find suggestions of delight.
Mary's father, Walter Gray, was employed at a watchmaker's of repute.

He spent all his working life with a magnifying glass in his eye, peering into the mechanism of watches, adjusting the delicate pivots and springs on which their lives moved.

His occupation had perhaps encouraged in him a habit of introspection.