"Maybe they do; over there. P'haps this soil didn't soute 'em. Wot I found diggin' the beds I put in them two round beds on the lawn. They wasn't no great quantity. Most on 'em perished loike, it 'pears to me."
"Perhaps you did not put them in right," I ventured. "How deep should you plant them?"
Oh! how ignorant I was. I did not feel even sure that I knew the right side up of a bulb.
Griggs gave a hoarse chuckle.
"They don't need to go fur in; 'bout so fur," and he made a movement that might indicate an inch or a yard; "but there's lots o' contrairy things that may 'appen to bulbs same as to most things. En'mies is wot there is in gardins, all along o' the curse."
Griggs was clerk; he never forgot that post of vantage. He looked at me as he said the word "curse." I wondered if his mind had made the connection between Eve and her daughter. But to return to the bulbs. Were worms the enemies in this particular case?
I knew they buried cities and raised rocks, and were our best diggers and fertilisers, because I had once read Darwin on the subject; but were they the enemies of bulbs?
"I am going to take the garden in hand a bit," I said after a pause. "I think it needs it."
"Well, I could do wi' a bit o' elp," and he wiped more mud from his spade to his hands, and from his hands to his trousers, and then back again, until I wondered what his wife did with him when she got him home. "But I reckon a boy 'ud be more 'andy loike. There's a lot o' talk," he added, half to himself.