“How long will it be, Sage, before I am helping you to put a little Luke and a little Sage to sleep?”
They were very silent directly after, and Sage felt a kind of wondering awe as, in obedience to a word from their mother, the two little white-robed things, with their fair hair like golden glories round their heads, knelt at Aunty Sage’s knee to lisp each a little simple prayer to God to send his angels to watch round their couch that night; and then back came Rue’s merry words, and with them wondering awe, almost dread, at the possibility of such as these at her feet ever calling her mother, and looking to her for help.
They stayed for a few minutes to see the children sleep, with their rosy little faces on the same pillow, and then, with their arms around each other, Sage and Rue, happy girls at heart once more, descended to the dining-room, where their aunt was telling Doctor Vinnicombe about her troubles with her garden, while their uncle’s face was full of good-humoured crinkles as she spoke.
“Here, girls,” he said, putting down his pipe, “come and comfort me while I’m being flogged.”
“I’m not flogging you, Joseph,” said Mrs Portlock, speaking in a serious, half-plaintive way; “but it will soon be time for Dicky to be doing up my garden again, and I do say that it is a shame that in my own ground you will be always planting seeds and things that have no business there.”
“Never put in anything that isn’t useful,” chuckled the Churchwarden, with his arms round his nieces’ waists as they stood by his side.
“Useful, yes; but you ought not to sow carrot-seed amongst my mignonette, and plant potato-cuttings in amongst my tulips and hearts-ease. I declare, doctor, if my verbena-bed was not full of cabbage plants one day, and when I pulled them up he had them set again, and often and often I’ve allowed swedes, and mangolds, and rape to get ever so big in the garden before I’ve known what they were.”
“He’s a terrible rascal, Mrs Portlock, that he is; and if I were you I’d have a divorce,” said the doctor.
“Ah, do, old lady,” chuckled the Churchwarden, but he became serious directly as his wife rose from her seat and went and stood behind his chair, with her hands upon his shoulders.
“A divorce?” she said, smiling. “Thirty years we’ve been man and wife, Joseph;” and he leaned back his head and said softly—