“These are our gardens,” said Pennie, doing the honours of the Wilderness; “that’s mine, and that’s Dickie’s, and the well belongs to the others. They dug it themselves.”
Ethelwyn looked round, with her little pointed nose held rather high in the air:
“Why don’t you keep it neater?” she said. “What an untidy place!”
It was a blow to Pennie to hear this, but the truth of it struck her forcibly, and she now saw for the first time that to a stranger the Wilderness might not be very attractive. There were, of course, no flowers now, and Dickie had tumbled a barrowful of leaves on to the middle of Pennie’s border, which was further adorned by a heap of oyster shells, with which David intended some day to build a grotto. It looked more like a rubbish heap than a garden, and the close neighbourhood of the well did not improve it. There was only one cheerful object in the Wilderness just now, and that was a little monthly rose-bush in Dickie’s plot of ground, which, in spite of most unfavourable circumstances, bore two bright pink blossoms.
After glancing scornfully round, Ethelwyn stooped and stretched out her hand to pick the roses; but Pennie caught hold of her dress in alarm.
“Oh, you mustn’t,” she cried; “they’re Dickie’s.”
Ethelwyn looked up astonished.
“Who’s Dickie?” she said; “what does he want them for?”
“It isn’t ‘he,’ it’s ‘she,’” said Nancy; “she’s the youngest but one, and she’s saving them for mother’s birthday.”
“Wouldn’t it be a joke,” said Ethelwyn laughing, “to pick them? She’d never know where they’d gone.”