Nor was he quite easy in his mind about that passage in his wife's letter stating that men would not take their bets. Was this meant as reflecting upon him? Was it a censure on him for making Trafford ride a horse beneath his weight? “They get up some stupid cry of that sort,” muttered he, “as if I am not the heaviest loser of all. I lost a horse that was worth a score of Traffords.”
When dressed, Sewell went down to the garden and lit his cigar. His sorrow had grown calmer, and he began to think that in the new life before him he should have had to give up horses and sport of every kind. “I must make my book now on this old fellow, and get him to make me his heir. He cares little for his son, and he can be made to care just as little for his granddaughter. That's the only game open to me,—a dreary life it promises to be, but it's better than a jail.”
The great large wilderness of a garden, stretching away into an orchard at the end, was in itself a place to suggest sombre thoughts,—so silent and forsaken did it all appear. The fruit lay thick on the ground uncared for; the artichokes, grown to the height of shrubs, looked monsters of uncouthness; and even in the alleys flower-seeds had fallen and given birth to flowers, which struggled up through the gravel and hung their bright petals over the footway. There was in the neglect, the silence, the un-cared-for luxuriance of the place, all that could make a moody man moodier; and as he knocked off the great heads of the tall hollyhocks, he thought, and even said aloud, “This is about as much amusement as such a spot offers.”
“Oh no, not so bad as that,” said a laughing voice; and Lucy peeped over a laurel-hedge with a rake in her hand, and seemed immensely amused at his discomfiture.
“Where are you?—I mean, how is one to come near you?” said he, trying to laugh, but not successfully.
“Go round yonder by the fish-pond, and you 'll find a wicket. This is my garden, and I till it myself.”
“So!” said he, entering a neat little enclosure, with beds of flowers and flowering shrubs, “this is your garden?”
“Yes,—what do you think of it?”