"They'll have to come out, I presume," said Mrs. Talcott, but without emotion.
"And where is the pyramidalis alba?"
"Well, he's got that up in the flagged garden where she wanted the blue," said Mrs. Talcott.
"And it will be so bad for them to move them again! What a pity! They have been sent for specially," Karen explained to Gregory. "My guardian heard of a particularly beautiful kind, and the white were to be for this corner of the wall, you see that they would look very lovely against the sea, and the blue were to be among the white veronica and white lupins in the flagged garden. And now they are all planted wrong, and so accurately and solidly wrong," she walked ahead of Mrs. Talcott examining the offending plants. "Are you quite sure they're wrong, Mrs. Talcott?"
"Dead sure," Mrs. Talcott made reply. "He did it this morning when I was in the dairy. He didn't understand, or got muddled, or something. I'll commence changing them round as soon as I've done this weeding. It'll be a good two hours' work."
"No, you must not do it till I can help you," said Karen. "To-morrow morning." She had a manner at once deferential and masterful of addressing the old lady. They were friendly without being intimate. "Now promise me that you will wait till I can help you."
"Well, I guess I won't promise. I like to get things off my mind right away," said Mrs. Talcott. If Karen was masterful, she was not yielding. "I'll see how the time goes after tea. Don't you bother about it."
They left her bending again over her beds. "She is very strong, but I think sometimes she works too hard," said Karen.
By a winding way she led him to the high flagged garden with its encompassing trees and far blue prospect, and here they sat for a little while in the sunlight and talked. "How different all this must be from your home in Northumberland," said Karen. "I have never been to Northumberland. Is your brother much there? Is he like you? Have you brothers and sisters?"
She questioned him with the frank interest with which he wished to question her. He told her about Oliver and said that he wasn't like himself. A faint flavour of irony came into his voice in speaking of his elder brother and finding Karen's calm eyes dwelling on him he wondered if she thought him unfair. "We always get on well enough," he said, "but we haven't much in common. He is a good, dull fellow, half alive."