Lavinia Trench’s strident voice rasped the sweet morning air. Theo was having altogether too pleasant a time, over there in Mrs. Ascott’s garden. That which she had related would have stung her mother to madness. But Theo’s afterthought was a little outcropping of Lavinia herself. In Dutton’s phrase: “That woman’ll have something stickin’ in her craw for years—and she’ll have to fetch it out, in spite of the devil. If you ever make her sore, or do her a bad turn—you might think she forgot it—but the time’ll come when she lets you hear about it.”
II
When the child had gone, Dutton untied the pads from his knees and approached his mistress. The wind had wrecked the frail framework which he had constructed of lath and the refuse from David Trench’s shop, to support the rank growth of tomato vines, over there by the wall. He admitted, shamefacedly, that he “knowed them end supports was too weak,” when he put them in. He wondered if Mrs. Ascott would mind helping him. Mrs. Dutton was in a bad humour, on account of some words she had had with Mrs. Trench. And Nanny was no good for carpenter work.
“I’m not much of a carpenter—”
“Oh, it ain’t work. It’s just that Nanny’s feet’s too big. She gets in the way. I thought I might call Dave over to he’p me; but he’s been out in the shop runnin’ the scroll saw for dear life, since right after breakfast. The old boy’s goin’ through his hells again. I tell you, ma’am, it’s an awful mistake to call a girl ‘Vine’ and then give her no mind to cling. When she’s in one o’ her tantrums, she wouldn’t see the Lord Jesus Christ if she met Him in the middle of the road—and she sets a heap o’ store by the Lord.”
There was only one way to handle Jeff Dutton. An open rebuke was invariably followed by a day of insolent idleness. Mrs. Ascott had heard him quarrel with Lavinia Trench in a manner to indicate that one of them, at least, had not forgotten their former state of social equality. The pointed ignoring of his familiar gossip usually proved efficacious. He followed his mistress to the loamy bed in the sheltered angle between the garage and the wall, where downy leaved vines and splintered lath lay in a hopeless tangle on the ground. A while they worked, side by side, the sullen silence broken only by the whirring of David’s saw. Judith’s fingers were verde and odorous, and the hem of her skirt was adorned with a batik pattern of grotesque figures in the harmonious hues of earth and vine. Nanny would scold. But what was the good of a garden, if one must only be a disinterested onlooker? Suddenly Dutton yelled:
“There! Grab ’er quick! This end—can’t you see?”
The next moment he offered profuse apology. But his mistress was ready for the emergency. It was necessary for him to go into the garage and cut another support to take the place of the one that had snapped.
“Better put this ’ere pad on the ground, under your right foot, while you hold ’er up. Them slippers is mighty thin. I won’t be gone a minute.”