“I think we’ve done enough here for one day, don’t you?” sighed Loveday, who detested weeding.
“That I do,” declared Aaron emphatically.
“Can’t we do something in that garden now, where Mr. Winter would see it, and be glad, and wonder who did it?”
Aaron nodded, and rose stiffly to his feet. “I wish ’twas breakfast-time,” he sighed.
Loveday thought the kitchen-garden by far the nicest bit that she had seen yet of Mr. Winter’s grounds. She felt safer there, too, for she could not be seen from the house, nor heard, and the place itself did not seem so hopeless of improvement. There was plenty to be done, or so they thought, but what they did, did make some show.
“I think we will tidy away all that straw first of all,” she said; “it makes that bed look so untidy, and I expect all the slugs and snails go to sleep in it. We can’t burn it to-day, so we’ll put it in a heap here for the time, and perhaps to-morrow we’ll bring some matches. If we’re very early nobody will see the smoke.”
But Aaron was doubtful of that.
“Porthcallis folks gets up early,” he said, “and father might see it as he brought the boat in. The smoke would show for miles round.”
They found a supply of tools in a shed in the garden, but they were rather big and heavy, so they gathered up the straw in their arms, and carried it away, which caused a good deal of running over the bed, and left many footprints.
“I think we ought to rake it over before we go,” said Loveday, looking at it rather anxiously; “nobody would think piskies’ feet had left marks like that.”