“It caps me, lads!” said old Tummus; “but there, I dunno: he allus was one of the clever ones. Look at him now; who’d ever think that he was blind as a mole? Why, he walks as upright as I do.”
There was a roar of laughter at this.
“Well, so he do,” cried old Tummus indignantly.
“That ain’t saying much, old man,” said one of the gardeners; “why, you go crawling over the ground like a rip-hook out for a walk.”
“Ah, never mind,” grumbled old Tummus, “perhaps if you’d bent down to your work as I have, you’d be as much warped. Don’t you get leaving tools and barrers and garden-rollers all over the place now.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause we, none on us, want to see that poor lad fall over ’em, and break his legs. Eh?”
No one did; and from that hour a new form of tidiness was observed in Mrs Mostyn’s garden.
Daniel Barnett said very little, but quite avoided Grange, who accepted the position, divining as he did the jealous feeling of his new superior, and devoted himself patiently to such tasks as he could perform, but instinctively standing on his guard against him whom he felt to be his enemy.
A couple of months had gone by when, one day, Mrs Mostyn came upon Grange in the conservatory, busily watering various plants which a touch had informed him required water.