Something in the face, which looked over the iron railing, seemed to interest the old man, who paused with his knife half through the wood of the rose-bush, and shading his eyes, took a keen survey of its features.
As if impelled by some mysterious attraction, the old gardener left his knife sticking in the wood, and moved with slow difficulty toward the iron railing, exactly as if the man had summoned him. Indeed, it almost seemed as if he had done so, for the moment those hobbling steps paused the stranger began to ask questions, which the old man, usually so grim and crusty with persons he did not know, answered with prompt respect.
“A beautiful garden this,” said the stranger, gently, meeting the old man’s gaze with a look that had something anxious in it.
“Well, yes, I should think so. It has been a growing a good many years, and from the first was rich.”
“Are you the gardener?”
“What, I? Of course. What else should I be, if not the madam’s gardener? I, who helped her to dig up her first little flower-bed when she wasn’t more than so high.”
Here the old man bent down a little, and measured off the empty space about to the level of his rheumatic knees.
“But you seem a very old man to work at all.”
“Do I? Well, it isn’t any hard work I do. There is a boy out there by the green-house that keeps himself busy obeying my orders, and he gets along pretty well considering.”
Here the old man pointed to a tall, stalwart laborer, some thirty-five years of age, who really did the work of the place, and whom the old man considered as a boy.