“This is Aaron Lobb; his father and mother live in your cottage under the cliff; and I am Loveday Carlyon, Dr. Carlyon’s daughter. I’ve come from Trelint to stay with Bessie for—for my health, and one day Aaron and I came up here with a message, and your garden looked so untidy, I wished the piskies would come and make it nice for you. And then we thought we would pretend to be piskies and get up very, very early, and make it all nice and tidy——”
“Excuse me,” snapped the old gentleman, “my garden was not untidy.”
“Oh, but please it was, dreadfully—I mean it looked so to me,” urged Loveday, struggling with her sense of truth and her desire to be polite. “I mean that outside part in front of the windows where the blinds are all drawn down. That was what we meant to tidy. I thought if you saw it looking tidy, and flowers growing, you wouldn’t feel so sad. It was that untidy part that made us think of it.”
“Yes, sir,” chimed in Aaron nervously; “please, sir, we didn’t never mean to come in here, but—but the other was so hard, and then we looked in here, and saw all the straw littered about—it reg’lar’y covered that bed.”
“I know it did,” said Mr. Winter. “I had had that bed sown with seeds of a rare and delicate kind, and covered them most carefully with straw to protect them, and—and you have destroyed them all by uncovering them.”
“Oh, I am sorry!” cried Loveday, drawing nearer to him. “But why didn’t you put something there to say so? If we had only known, we would have put on more stuff to keep them warm.”
“But when you invaded my garden the second time, and saw that the bed had been covered again with straw, couldn’t you understand that it was done for a purpose?”
“We thought the piskies had done it,” said Loveday, as though that excused everything.
“You thought what!” cried the gentleman. “You thought the piskies—! Oh dear, dear! To think that such ignorance should exist in this twentieth century! It is disgraceful!” Then, turning to the children: “Come with me while I decide what can be done.”
Loveday followed with less fear than she would have felt a few moments earlier. For one reason, Mr. Winter did not seem quite so angry as he had at first; for another, he had not spoken again of policemen; and, for a third reason, she was rather anxious to see what the house looked like inside.