Ludovic adjusted his crutch-like stick, and fumbled obediently with long pieces of bass and the top-heavy overgrown dahlias.
“Rosamund is not good at this sort of job, although she offers to help me most regularly, poor dear! But it’s not in her line at all.”
“Why don’t you have in old Jones or someone two or three times a week?” said Ludovic with the more earnestness that his own wrestlings with the bass were strangely unsuccessful.
“We do have him every now and then, but I love pottering about, and so does Minnie. We’ve practically made the whole of this border—the place was in a dreadful state when we came.”
Ludovic looked round the small garden.
“It has altered a good deal,” he conceded.
His voice was expressionless.
Bertha looked up sharply.
“There have been no changes to hurt her,” she said quickly. “One understood—good heavens, yes! There are the two tiny plots over these under those lilac bushes, that belonged to them—Rosamund and Frances—when they were little children. Somehow I knew that by instinct—and why she always said wallflowers were her favourite flowers. This place is one mass of them in the spring. She’s not sentimental, you know, but little things like that that are sacred to one—afterwards. And Rosamund knows that I understand.”
“Yes.”