“Let her talk, my dear,” said Uncle Luke, “it doesn’t hurt any one. Don’t talk nonsense, Van’s wife. What use could you make of her? She is like the thistle that grows up behind my place, a good-looking prickly plant, with a ball of down for a head. Let her be; you always get the worst of it. The more you excite her the more that head of hers sends out floating downy seeds to settle here and there, and do mischief. She has spoiled my nephew Harry, and nearly spoiled my niece.”
“Don’t you believe it, Mr Leslie,” cried Madelaine, with a long earnest look in her eyes.
“Quite true. Miss Impudence,” continued Uncle Luke. “Always was a war between me and the useless plants.”
“Well, I can’t sit here silent and listen to such heresy,” cried Mrs Van Heldre, shaking her head. “Surely, Luke Vine, you don’t call yourself a useful plant.”
“Bless my soul, ma’am, then I suppose I’m a weed?”
“Not you,” said Van Heldre, forcing a show of interest in the conversation.
“Yes, old fellow, I am,” said Uncle Luke, holding his sherry up to the light, and sipping it as if he found real enjoyment therein. “I suppose I am only a weed, not a thistle, like Margaret up yonder, but a tough-rooted, stringy, matter-of-fact old nettle, who comes up quietly in his own corner and injures no one so long as people let him alone.”
“No, no, no, no!” said Madelaine emphatically.
“Quite right. Miss Van Heldre,” said Leslie.
“Hear, hear?” cried Van Heldre.