“Quite right!” said the old gentleman, nodding. “Nice evening for fishing. You’ll get some flat-fish, I daresay.”
“And,” said Will, making an effort, and speaking hoarsely in his eagerness to make a clean breast, “I asked him if he’d come home and have tea with me before we go.”
The old gentleman winced for a moment, as he might have winced in the old days when, as purser, he inspected his stores on a long voyage, and feared that they were running short. It was but for a moment, and then he recovered himself.
“Asked him to tea? that’s well, that’s right, my lad. I’m glad to see you, sir. Do you like flowers?”
“I love them,” cried the boy, who was gazing half wonderingly at the old man’s florid face, and its frame of stiff grey hairs.
“Then you shall have one of my best clove-pinks,” he went on, taking his great pruning-knife from his pocket. “Let me see,” he continued, opening the blade slowly, “which is the best? Ah! that’s a good one—that’s a beauty—there!”
He stooped down, and after a good deal of selection cut a splendid aromatic clove-pink, and handed it smiling to the boy, who smelt it and placed it in the button-hole of his loose flannel jacket.
“It’s a beauty,” he cried.
“Yes, isn’t it?” said the old man proudly. “Don’t get such flowers as that in London, eh?”
“Only in Covent Garden,” replied the visitor.