It was plain that he had heard of Bertie’s labors over this patch of land. Perhaps, unknown to all, he often visited the gardens that had once been the pride and pleasure of his children, as he visited Sunday by Sunday, unknown to all, the grave that hid his loved ones away from him. Perhaps he had watched the child at his labor of love during the past week; at least he expressed no surprise when he stood beside the trim enclosure and looked at the carefully-tended plots.
But he pointed to the white stones and asked,—
“Why the names?”
And Bertie could explain now, as he could not perhaps have done an hour ago. He looked up into the Squire’s face and said, in his earnest way,—
“I was afraid perhaps—some day—that they would get forgotten; when you are dead, you know, and I have gone away. I thought somebody else might come who wouldn’t know, and who would dig up the gardens and take them right away. I didn’t want them to do that, so I thought if I put the names there, that perhaps people would wonder, and ask whose gardens they were, and then they would hunt about and see the names in the churchyard, and then they would know that they belonged to the children who had all died together long ago, and that would make them feel sorry and they would tell the gardeners not to disturb these gardens, but to keep them nice always, and so Tom and Charley, Mary and Violet, would never be quite forgotten.”
The Squire made no reply; he started a little as the long unheard names of his children fell upon his ear, but he did not speak, and only took Bertie’s hand again and led him towards the house.
And on the threshold he paused, bent his head and kissed him, saying softly and gently,—
“My little boy now.”