The Garden of Resurrection by E. Temple Thurston

It was the first, the very first, day of spring. A man walked by me / with a narcissus in his coat and he was humming a tune.

By the looks of him -- the tail-coat, the bowler hat, the little leather / hand-bag -- he was an artisan. You know that game of placing people. / I put him down as an electrician. He had been attending to a job up / West. He was returning to the premises of his firm in Bond Street. All / this, of course, was surmise. But of one thing I was certain. He had / no business to be walking through the Park. He ought to have been on a / 'bus, or in the Underground Railway, speeding back to save his firm's / most precious time, ready to start forth once more upon his firm's most / urgent errands. Instead of this -- it was the first day of spring -- he was / walking through the Park and I was envying him. I envied the narcissus / in his coat. Even the very tune he was humming touched a sense of / covetousness in my heart.