Arundel by E.F. Benson — Read

Elizabeth was sitting in the drawing-room window of the little house that her mother and she had taken in Oakley Street on a warm, uncertain afternoon of April in the following year. The window was wide open and the breeze that blew in from the south-west ruffled the leaves of the music that stood open on the piano. It seemed to the girl's indolent mood that there was quite a good chance of their not blowing on to the floor, and since that was so, she much preferred going to pick them up if this happened rather than disturb herself for fear of its happening. Outside there was a small brick-walled enclosure, with strips of flower-bed, bright, nodding with daffodils, and a fig-tree, rather sooty in foliage, and hopelessly incapable of bearing any fruit at all, was thrusting out broad handlike leaves from its angled boughs.

This enclosure Mrs. Fanshawe was accustomed to call "that dreadful little backyard" when she felt like that, but in more cheerful moods alluded to it as "that dear little garden. " For some days past it had been a dreadful little backyard.