Everything was quiet. Most of the windows of those neat little houses displayed shaded gas-jets between the muslin curtains. From where he stood, the dark outline of the pig-dealer’s shed was a small huddled blackness against the tall ash-tree further on. Over the top of the shadowy hedge came a faint smell of cattle-trampled grass, a poor antidote to the manure-drain whose stench soon swallowed it up. His own house was still two or three doors off. He could see a thin stream of light emerging from its upper window. Gerda was in her bedroom, then⁠—in her bedroom at a quarter past nine! Had Bob Weevil cajoled her up there, directly they’d finished their supper? “Where did I once read,” he thought, “that whatever liberties they allow, they usually fight shy of their man’s bed? Good Lord! but what are beds? Beds are nothing. Beds are birth, death, and the morning and evening. But they’re nothing when it comes to this! This can take the heart out of any bed.”