From this we came out on an open space at the top of the kitchen garden, where, under a wall overgrown with ivy, lay the children’s gardens.
“What a wilderness!” was Eleanor’s first exclamation, in a tone of dismay, and then she added with increased vehemence, “He’s taken away the rhubarb-pot. What will Clement say?”
“What is it, dear?” I asked.
“It’s the rhubarb-pot,” Eleanor repeated. “You know Clement is always having new fads every holidays, and he can’t bear his things being disturbed whilst he’s at school. But how can I help it if I’m at school too?”
“Of course you can’t,” said I, gladly seizing upon the only point in her story that I could understand, to express my sympathy.
“And he got one of the rhubarb-pots last holidays,” Eleanor continued. “It was rather broken, and Thomas gave in to his having it then, so it’s very mean of him to have moved it now, and I shall tell him so. And Clement painted church windows on it, and stuck it over a plant of ivy at the top of the garden. He thought it would force the ivy, and he expected it would grow big by the time he came home. He wanted it to hang over the top, and look like a ruin. Oh, he will be so vexed!”
The ivy plant was alive, though the “ruin” had been removed by the sacrilegious hands of Thomas. I suggested that we should build a ruin of stones, and train the ivy over that, which idea was well received by Eleanor; the more so that a broken wall at the top of the croft supplied materials, and Stonehenge suggested itself as an easy, and certainly respectable, model.
Meanwhile we decided to “do the weeding first,” as being the least agreeable business, and so set to work; I in a leisurely manner, befitting the heat of the day, and Eleanor with her usual energy. She toiled without a pause, and accomplished about treble the result of my labours. After we had worked for a long time, she sat up, pressing her hand to her forehead.
“My head quite aches, Margery, and I’m so giddy. It’s very odd; gardening never made me so before I went away.”
“You work so at it,” said I, “you may well be tired. What makes you work so at things?”