“Funny thing, I never planted a seed before in my life. I can’t believe the things’ll come up—and I’m likely to perish of joy and pride if they do. You’ll have to break the news to me gently, Miss Moran. There’s something about getting down to the soil—”
“Ellen thinks we’ve got down to too much soil,” explained the girl who had risen to her feet and was futilely brushing at her skirt. “She has an old-fashioned prejudice in favor of cleanliness and I suppose we’ll have to humor her by washing before dinner. Stiff?”
“Not a bit.”
“Well, you will be,” she promised encouragingly. “I always am, at first. Gardening is queer. Every time I finish a day of it, I vow that the game isn’t worth the candle and that I’ll eat tinned stuff and use wild flowers for the rest of my life. Then the next morning, I fairly wriggle with impatience to get out into the garden and go to digging again. It’s as bad as the cocaine habit. If you aren’t willing to be a slave to it, you’d better turn your back on it here and now.”
“Too late. I’m a victim—and you’ll have to oversee my digging. It’s the least you can do when you’ve started me on my downward way. Don’t you think so, Ellen?”
“Go your ways in and make yourselves decent, the two of you.”
Ellen’s voice was stern but her eyes were merry.
“You’ve made a tremendous hit with her,” the Smiling Lady confided to him as they went through the hall. “She’s never nice and disrespectful to anybody unless she likes him enormously.”
He stayed to dinner, after a faint-hearted protest and a murmur of contrition in regard to Pegeen’s wasted culinary efforts. He voiced the latter to Ellen when, coming downstairs before his hostess, he met the woman in the hall.
“Don’t be worryin’ about Peg, sir,” she said reassuringly. “She’s used to irregular doin’s and she’ll just give you your dinner for supper—the way that there’ll be nothin’ to do but warm things up and set them on. It’d be a shame—you to be goin’ and dinner ready here.”