“Weeds!” says the being, “weeds!”
He emerges more completely from the bush, showing a hand occupied with a lot of little twigs, and a knife rather like himself to look at—not too sharp.
As if a voice from the unknown had wafted over the desert, he stands in wonder, looking reproachfully at those who have interrupted his toil.
“The weather makes them grow.” Of course it does. We knew that. We did not come here to call Walter to ask him what made weeds grow, but to know why he had not weeded, at our special request, the Carnation border.
From a cavernous pocket in a much-mended pair of trousers of a shape never designed by mortal hands, he produces a quantity of felt strips, and some wall nails.
We repeat our original suggestion, that the Carnation border is choked with weeds.
“So it be!”
Then, after the great being has taken observations of the sky, causing him to screw up one eye and wag his head sagely as if he had communication with the unseen powers, he admits that he has been watering the greenhouse.
“The Vines take a deal o’time about now.”
It would be useless to remark to this calm person that we found, only yesterday, a dozen plants dying in the greenhouse, and all for want of water. But, from a sort of foolhardy courage, we do say as much.