I remembered with a feeling of pain how our old cook and factotum had received the news that I was taking cooking lessons in much the same spirit; but my newly-found energy was not going to be suppressed by Griggs.
"I am going to order some more bulbs," I began.
"Ah! you might do that. The gardin needs things puttin' into it, that's what it needs."
I looked at him sternly. "And things taken out of it too. I never knew such a place for weeds."
"No more didn't I. It's fearful bad soil for weeds; but maybe if there warn't so much room for 'em they'd get sort of crowded out."
"You have been here a good many years," I said, not without an afterthought.
"Yes; that's wot I 'ave been. I come first in ole Mr Wood's time; 'e was a 'and at roses, 'e was; somethin' loike we 'ad the place then, me an' 'im. Then Mr 'Erbert took it, that's when ole Woods, 'is father as 'twere, doied. But 'e didn't stay long; went fur a missunairy 'e did to them furrin parts and never come back, 'e didn't neither. Then come Mr Cooper, ten years, no, 'levin, he was 'ere and never did a bit to the gardin; took no interes', no cuttin's, no seeds, no manure, no nothink. That's 'ow the weeds overmastered us."
"But at least you might have dug up the weeds."
"Allays callin' me away for some'ot, they was. The Bath chair for 'is sister as lived with 'im, allays some'ot. Talk o' gardinin'! The weeds just come."
Then his tone brightened a bit; the Bath chair had been an unpleasing retrospect.