"Didn't—know—Miss—Crabingway—had a gardener," repeated Silas, amazed. "Why—I done this gardin——man and boy—forty year, I 'ave. Don't it look like it?" he demanded.
"Yes, it does—of course it does," answered Pamela, trying to appease him.
"Well then—" he began, then caught sight of Isobel treading on the side of the garden bed. "'Ere! Get orf that, my gel," he cried. "You're crushin' them li'l plants."
This was too much for Isobel. The gruff, disrespectful tones, the ordering manner, and the 'my gel,' made her suddenly enraged, and her temper got beyond her control.
"How—how dare you!" she flared up. "This is no more your garden than it is—than it is mine, and I won't be spoken to like this!"
As her words seemed to be making no impression on Silas, she deliberately stamped on the little plants; then, her temper being properly roused, she turned and snatching at a branch of the bush behind her she twisted and bent it and snapped it off, and flung it on to the pathway.
"There!" she panted. "Now perhaps you will understand that I will not tolerate your insolent manner."
With her head high in the air, and her cheeks burning, she walked haughtily away into the house.
Old Silas was dumbfounded.
"Oh, how silly!" cried Pamela, ashamed for Isobel. "I'm so sorry she did that."