The Rosery Folk

“Pray speak gently, dear.”
“Speak gently! how can a man speak gently? The things are of no value, but it worries me, I’ve taken such pains with them, through the cold weather, to bring them on.”
“You have, Sir James, you have, sir; and I never let the fire go out once.”
“No: but you’ve let the grapes go out, confound you! and if I find that you have been dishonest—”
“Oh! but I’m sure, dear, that he would not be.”
“Thank you kindly, my lady,” said John Monnick, the old gardener, taking off his hat and wiping his streaming brow with his arm, as he stood bent and dejected, leaning upon his spade, with every line in his countenance puckered and drawn with trouble, and a helpless look of appeal in his eyes. “No, my lady, I wouldn’t let these here old hands take to picking and stealing, and many’s the trouble I’ve been in with Fanny and Martha and the others because I was so particular even to a gooseberry.”
“There, dear, I told you so!”
“But the grapes are gone,” cried Sir James Scarlett angrily. “Who could have taken them?”
“That’s what puzzles me, Master James, it do indeed. I did get into temptation once, and took something, but it’s been a lesson to me; and I said then, never no more, with the Lord’s help, and never no more, sir, it’s true, never up to now.”
“Then you confess you did steal some fruit once?”
“Yes, Master James, I confess it, sir, and a deal I’ve thought about it since; and I’ve come to think from much reading, sir, that though this here garden wasn’t planted eastward in Eden it’s a very beautiful place; all the neighbours say, sir, that there ain’t a more beautiful little place for miles round, and Lady Martlett’s folk’s about wild at our growing such better fruit and flowers.”