“It’s too bad she’s gone,” he said solemnly to Billy, “but—the way I’ve longed for fried onions!” He heaved a mighty sigh of relief and put a frying pan on the stove to heat. The whole of the cottage became filled presently with an odor that caused Captain Saulsby to sniff delightedly, but that would have made the nurse throw open every door and window.
When the delectable repast was over he came and sat down in the doorway and filled a pipe whose perfume rivalled that of even the onions.
“I’ll have to smoke night and day for a while,” he said, “to catch up on myself. Whew-ew, but that is good!”
Jacky Shute had laboured manfully in the garden during Captain Saulsby’s illness. Even his small remnant of a conscience smote him when he was tempted to neglect the weeds, and the Captain’s comment, “shipshape as can be, Jacky; I didn’t know you had it in you,” made his small countenance beam with pride.
The delicate, crinkled poppies were blooming abundantly throughout the garden. It was the season when they were in their full glory, when all else in Captain Saulsby’s little place, the vegetables, the currant bushes, and the fruit trees, must be quite cast into the shade. The old sailor ventured forth on a short tour of inspection, and actually managed to reach the bench down by the hedge where he and Billy had sat upon the day they became acquainted.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” he remarked complacently as he viewed his small domain. “Of course, raising flowers and garden truck is a mighty little business after you have once followed the sea, but an old sailor likes to have things as they should be, whether he’s at sea or ashore. No,” he looked over the place again with a pleased smile, “no, it doesn’t look so bad.”
One of the summer visitors came along the path to ask for some of the packets of poppy-seed that Captain Saulsby, although he made a business of selling them, always parted with most grudingly. This woman he looked over long and severely, and asked her many searching questions before he finally drew a package of seeds from his pocket and graciously allowed her to buy it.
“She looks to me like one of those women who would try to grow poppies in a pot,” he said to Billy after she had gone. “I didn’t really quite trust her, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. She came from up Boston way: that was what saved her. I hope she will really take care of them.”
“I’ve noticed you won’t sell seeds to everybody,” Billy said. “Don’t you like to think that your flowers will be growing everywhere?”
“They won’t grow unless people treat them right,” he answered. “There’s some women, those young giggly things with embroidery parasols, that think my flowers are ‘so attractive’ and that they can grow them to pin to the front of their ruffled white dresses. Much good poppies will do any one who tries to wear them! They droop and die in ten minutes and the sweet young things say ‘Oh, dear!’ and throw them away. And there are others who say my place here is ‘so original and quaint’ and they must have a corner in their gardens just like it, so they take the seeds away to plant them somewhere in the Middle West where the ground bakes as hard as iron and the hot air dries up the buds before they can open. No, poppies have to have cool earth to dig their toes into, and cool salt air to breathe; it’s sea breezes that put the colour into them, and a good wet fog is their meat and drink. Poor things, I hate to think of them off somewhere drooping and withering for a whiff of fresh salt wind.”