This would place the man in an unpleasant business aspect, so he said gruffly:
"I will send some men right up."
"And I will take no action till I see whether they come," said Edith significantly.
They came, and in a few days the work was finished. But a bill double the amount they expected came promptly, also. They paid no attention to it.
In the meantime Edith had asked the village merchant, who supplied them with provisions, and who had also become a sort of agent for them, to send a man to plow the garden. The next day a slouchy old fellow, with two melancholy shacks of horses that might well tremble at the caw of a crow, was scratching the garden with a worn-out plow when she came down to breakfast. He had already made havoc in the flower borders, and Edith was disgusted with the outward aspect of himself and team to begin with. But when in her morning slippers she had picked her way daintily to a point from which she could look into the shallow furrows, her vexation knew no bounds. She had been reading about gardening of late, and she had carefully noted how all the writers insisted on deep plowing and the thorough loosening of the soil. This man's furrows did not average six inches, and with a frowning brow, and dress gathered up, she stood perched on a little stone, like a bird that had just alighted with ruffled plumage, while Zell was on the porch laughing at her. The man with his gaunt team soon came round again opposite her, with slow automatic motion as if the whole thing were one crazy piece of mechanism. The man's head was down, and he paid no heed to Edith. The rim of his old hat flapped over his face, the horses jogged on with dropping head and ears, as if unable to hold them up, and all seemed going down, save the plow. This light affair skimmed and scratched along the ground like the sharpened sticks of oriental tillage.
"Stop!" cried Edith sharply.
"Whoa!" shouted the man, and he turned toward Edith a pair of watery eyes, and a face that suggested nothing but snuff.
"Who sent you here?" asked Edith in the same tone.
"Mr. Hard, mum." (Mr. Hard was the merchant who was acting as their agent.)
"Am I to pay you for this work, or Mr. Hard?"