“I told him, you know, how welcome you’d be,” he continued. “Garden’s always open to you, ma’am. Come often. Him too.”
He was at the door as he said this, and nodding and bowing he backed out, while I followed him downstairs to open the door.
“Look here,” he said, offending me directly by catching hold of one end of my neckerchief, “you bring her over, and look here,” he went on in a severe whisper, “you be a good boy to her, and try all you can to make her happy. Do you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I do try.”
“That’s right. Don’t you worry her, because—because it’s my opinion that she couldn’t bear it, and boys are such fellows. Now you mind.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I’ll mind;” and he went away, while, when I returned to the room where my mother was holding the flowers to her face, and seeming as if their beauty and sweetness were almost more than she could bear, I glanced towards the window, and there once more, with his head just above the wall, and peering through the thick bristling twigs, was that boy Shock, watching our window till old Brownsmith reached his gate.
Hardly a week had passed before the old man got hold of me as I was going by his gate, taking me as usual by the end of my tie and leading me down the garden to cut some more flowers.
“You haven’t brought her yet,” he said. “Look here, if you don’t bring her I shall think you are too proud.”
“He shall not think that,” my mother said; and for the next week or two she went across for a short time every day, while I walked beside her, for her to lean upon my shoulder, and to carry the folding seat so that she might sit down from time to time.
Upon these occasions I never saw Shock, and old Brownsmith never came near us. It was as if he wanted us to have the garden to ourselves for these walks, and to a great extent we did.