"This is galega. It is rather tall and so must go at the back. I don't mean you never talk sense, though I consider it insulting to address a baby like that. They look so preternaturally grave that Greek would suit them better. But I mean it isn't a man's work, it is a woman's."
"Galega! that means pok—no, larkspur! You see I am getting quite learned. There, it fits in beautifully."
"Press the roots firmly or they don't take hold," I observed.
"So. I always find your conversation very improving. My mother says the same things to me, I mean about old women."
I had walked down the path for another root. He went on when I came back,
"But you know the old women, and young ones too, like a visit from their clergy. The clergyman and doctor are great boons in their lives."
"Poor souls, I know they are very hard up. Even I am considered a boon, especially when I go round with puddings and things."
"Or without!" and he looked up quickly, "I should think so if—but"—and his voice changed—"I do understand what you mean. This is Adam's work, eh? Only the other is the vineyard too, and we, I—I mean, need the experience it gives me. They live at the root of things, touch life so nearly. It is something like coming in touch, actual touch, with the brown earth. Do you see what I am trying to say?"
I looked up at him from my plants, at this tall young man in a bicycling suit of semi-clerical cut, with his keen face and earnest eyes, whom we had fallen into the way of treating in almost brotherly fashion since his Reverence had adopted him as his Young Man as well as curate. He had broken down in some Midland town from overwork and come to Fairleigh to recruit and study and fill in a convalescent time. As a rule we did not like the curates.