"I am certainly not good enough for anything else." He began to whistle, but it was not a success, and he stopped.
"See here," insisted Taylor; "turn round here and answer me." Cairness continued to stand with his head down, looking at the geraniums. The parson was wiser than his wife in that he knew when it was of no use to insist. "What's keeping you around here, anyway? You ought to have gotten out when you left the service—and you half meant to then. What is it?"
Cairness raised his shoulders. "My mines," he said, after a while. The Reverend Taylor did not believe that, but he let it go.
"Well," he said more easily, "you've accomplished the thing you set out to do, anyway."
"One thing," muttered Cairness.
"Eh?" the parson was not sure he had heard.
"Just nothing," Cairness laughed shortly, and breaking off one of the treasured geranium blossoms, stuck it in a buttonhole of his flannel shirt.
"I heard you," said the little man; "what's the other?"—"Oh, I dare say I'll fail on that," he answered indifferently, and taking up his sombrero went out to saddle his horse.