Old Silas's watery blue eyes were still more watery as he stooped down and tried with gentle hands to remedy the mischief that Isobel had done to the little plants. Pamela knelt down on the path to help him, and was bending over the garden bed when all at once she heard the old gardener give a chuckle. She glanced round in surprise. Silas was wagging his head from side to side and chuckling to himself. The plants were not very much damaged, and the bush—well, it would grow again. But it was not these discoveries that filled old Silas's soul with glee.
"Who'd a thought it!" he chuckled. "There's a high sperrit for yer! 'Oighty-toighty is it, my gel? Ho! Hall right! We shall see. Ole Silas Sluff'll learn yer to darnse on 'is gardin. You wait!"
He took no more notice of Pamela, but seemed absorbed in his own thoughts, and when Pamela left him and went indoors he was still giving occasional chuckles and muttering to himself.
"What made you do it?" Pamela said to Isobel afterward. "It didn't do any good——"
"But the man was preposterous!" said Isobel.
"I know he spoke gruffly, but I don't think he meant to be rude," said Pamela. "It's just his manner."
"Then it's time he learnt better," Isobel replied. "I don't know what the world's coming to, I'm sure, with all these inferior creatures setting up to teach——"
"If you count Silas Sluff your inferior, you should be sorry for him and set to work to show him how to behave, instead of——"
"If he were my gardener I'd dismiss him on the spot," Isobel said.
Pamela realized the uselessness of continuing the discussion any further at present, and so the subject was dropped for the time being.