“Yes; see anything about her?”
“I thought she looked better this morning than she did last night. Was she ill?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Get them steps.”
I fetched them steps, and thought that a gardener might just as well be grammatical.
He opened them out, and opening his knife, cut a few strands of matting ready, stuck them under one of his braces, after taking off his coat, and then climbed up to the top to tie in a long green cane of the grape-vine.
“Hold the steps steady,” he said; and then with his head in amongst the leaves he went on talking.
“Bit queer in the head,” he said slowly, and with his face averted. “Shied at you.”
I stared. His wife was not a horse, and I thought they were the only things that shied; but I found I was wrong, for Mr Solomon went on:
“I did, too. Ezra said a lot about you. Fine young shoot this, ain’t it?”
I said it was, for it was about ten feet long and as thick as my finger, and it seemed wonderful that it should have grown like that in a few months; but all the time my cheeks were tingling as I wondered what Old Brownsmith had said about me.