“Yes,” says the immortal, “they need a power of water. A good drop is no good.”
We venture to remonstrate with him, saying, in a few well chosen words, that it would be useful of him, then, to give them “a good watering while he was about it.”
He agrees at once. “It would do them a power of good.”
Realising that we are drifting from the main grievance, we return hot to the bed of Carnations. We admit to having but just this moment come from weeding them ourselves, and in so saying we hope to make appeal to his better nature. Nothing of the kind.
“I noticed,” he says, “you sp’iled some of the layers where you’d a-been treading.”
When we have turned away defeated, he sinks again to his mysterious task, and it seems that the ground swallows him.
Then again, in the early morning, he seems to have had overnight talks with Mercury, or Apollo, or whoever it is who arranges the weather, as he invariably greets us with some curt sentence.
“Rain afore noon,” or “Wind’ll be in the nor’west afore night.” Thereby giving us to understand that he has been given a glass of nectar in some lower servants’ hall in Olympus, and has picked up the gossip of what Jupiter has decreed for the day. We feel, as he intends us to feel, vastly inferior. In fact we have given way to a habit of asking his advice on certain points, which has proved fatal.
He doles out our fruit to us just as he likes, and we feel quite guilty when we pick one of our own peaches from our own walls.
“I see you pick a peach last night,” he says. “’Tisn’t for me to say anything, but I was countin’ on giving you a nice dish NEXT week.”