Barbara looks suspiciously from one to the other.
‘Dering, I believe you are complaining to the Colonel about my watering the flowers at the wrong time of day.’
‘Aha! Aha!’ The Colonel thinks she is even wittier than Dering, who is properly abashed.
‘I did just mention it, miss.’
‘You horrid!’ Barbara shakes her mop of hair at the gardener. ‘Dear, don’t mind him. And every time he says they are his flowers and his apples, you tell me, and I shall say to his face that they are yours.’
‘The courage of those young things!’ says the happy Colonel.
Dering’s underlip becomes very pronounced, but he goes off into the garden. Barbara attempts to attend to the Colonel’s needs.
‘Let me make you comfy—the way granny does it.’
She arranges his cushions clumsily.
‘That is not quite the way she does it,’ the Colonel says softly. ‘Do you call her granny, Barbara?’