"Well, what do you think of your new missus?" he said to the maid-servant, who had just been filling a stone-pitcher at the pump in the yard.
"She seems a decent body enow," was the reply. "But I haven't seen much of her yet. What are you doing there, Harry?"
"Why, you must know that I'm rather a good hand at gardening," answered the lad, desisting from his occupation of digging a hole in the ground, and resting on his spade: "and I'm going to move that young tree to this spot here—because it's all in the shade where it stands now, and will never come to no good."
"Ah! that's one of the young trees that Jeffreys planted—him who went away so suddenly yesterday morning, and which made me come and fetch you to help us here," observed the maid. "But, come—go on with your work," she added, laughing; "and let me see whether you really know how to handle a spade."
"Well—you shall see," returned the boy; and he fell to work again with the more alacrity because a pretty girl was watching his progress. "But I'll tell you fairly," he said, after a few minutes' pause in the conversation, "this digging here is no proof of what I can do; because the ground is quite soft—and the more I dig, the surer I am that the earth has been turned up here very lately."
"That I am certain it has not," exclaimed the maid-servant.
"But I say that it has, though," persisted Harry. "Look here—how easy it is to dig out! Do you think I don't know?"
"You fancy yourself very clever, my boy," said the female-domestic, laughing: "but you're wrong for once. We had no man-servant here before Jeffreys come—and he never dug there, I declare."
"Now, I just tell you what I'll do for the fun of the thing," cried the lad. "I'll dig out all the earth as far down as it has been dug out before—because I can now see that a hole has been dug here," he added emphatically.