There, scattered among the cobble-stones were the treasured blades of grass. They had been ruthlessly torn from their roots, and lay all curled up and shrivelled in the sun. Of all Tommy’s garden not one green blade remained. Carefully Miss Margaret picked up the limp and faded leaves; none must be left for Tommy to see again lying there all dead. Just as she had taken up the last dead blade, big drops splashed upon the door-step, and the shower that Tommy had outrun came heavily down.
As Miss Margaret was closing the door Mrs. Tregennis ran hurriedly across the alley; over her shoulders as protection from the rain she had thrown a thick woollen antimacassar snatched from the back of Auntie Jessie’s rocking-chair.
On the door-step she rested, panting, flushed and smiling. “Oh, Miss,” she gasped, “what a shower, and Miss Dorothea somewheres along the beach! I must find Tom and send him with a cloak to the caves, may be she’ll be shelterin’ there.”
“Yes,” responded Miss Margaret in a way that plainly showed she scarcely heard what Mrs. Tregennis was saying.
Opening her hand she disclosed the dead grass blades lying there. “It’s Tommy’s garden,” she explained.
Mrs. Tregennis opened the door again, stepped out into the drenching rain, looked down between the stones and understood.
“My poor lamb; where is he, Miss?”
“Upstairs in our room crying.”
“Bless his little heart! I’m afraid Annabel did it, Miss Margaret, and in a way our Tommy did justly deserve it, for he’s been very naughty to she, time an’ again he has.”
“Yes, I know, Mrs. Tregennis, but ...” Miss Margaret hesitated a moment. “You know it’s largely my fault, too, for I haven’t been a bit nice to that child ever once.”