"Do you know, sir, the uninitiated might mistake you for a most cold-hearted and callous parent. If you lived up to the ideal, you would be saying beautiful things about my industry, and the conversion of wilderness into rose, and Griggs's, well, not his conversion, but he has done more work this last year than for the twenty before. And you would be saying that the five pounds—"
"Ah! I thought we were coming to that. It's quite gone, I suppose?"
"Gone! Goodness me! and so has a good deal of its successor. But it is all right. I practically went the year round with that first fiver. All I am doing now is for next year, you see. I have drawn you up a statement of accounts and you will see that I even kept a little money for summer bulbs, though they can only come on next year. Which was generous of the first year to the second, you will perceive. But I wanted so many things that it was too late to buy last autumn or I did not know of them. And I have begged and borrowed as well as bought. Don't you think the garden has grown?"
"Yes, Mary, I really do; and I conclude from your having entered upon the second five pounds that you want it, and are not going to resign the situation."
"I don't think you can do without me."
And his Reverence said, after a moment,
"I don't want to try."
The little statement of accounts that I formally laid upon the study table was as follows:
| Bulbs | £2 | 0 | 0 |
| Seeds | 1 | 10 | 0 |
| Odd Plants | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| Roses | 0 | 13 | 6 |
| Geranium Cuttings | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| Summer Bulbs | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| £5 | 0 | 0 |
His Reverence eyed it critically.