“Those ’ere things as they put in yesterday. I thought, maybe, they was something special, from the care they took about ’em.” He gave an explanatory kick with his foot to the weeds piled up on the gravel path, and there was a pause of two whole minutes before a weak little voice inquired faintly:
“Who took such care? Who put them in? I don’t understand.”
“The young master up at The Larches and one of his gardeners. They was here for a good two hours. We wondered to see you scratching them up. Joe says to me, he says, ‘Go down and tell her,’ he says. ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘she knows what she’s about!’ I says. ‘She’s not the sort to do a trick like that,’ I says.”
Peggy’s lips positively ached with the effort of twisting them into a smile.
“That was very kind of you,” she said. “It would be a silly trick, would it not? Do you think you could boil the kettle for me now? I feel badly in need of some tea.”
Chapter Twelve.
Rob received Peggy’s confession of her latest gardening exploit with a roar of good-natured laughter. She had been afraid lest he might be angry, or—what would have been even worse—superior and forbearing; but he was neither the one nor the other. Such a genuine, Peggy-Pickle trick, he declared, was worth taking some trouble to enjoy, and went far towards consoling him for the advent of a fashionable young lady in the place of his mischievous little friend. His generosity was not sufficient, however, to prevent him from enlarging on the exceeding beauty of the seedlings which had been so ruthlessly disturbed, and Peggy listened in an agony to a string of names wherein syllables ran riot. Salpiglossis! Alas, alas! she had not the faintest idea what the flower was like, but the name was exquisite, all-satisfying. It rolled off her tongue with sonorous effect. To speak of it alone would have been joy. She looked so meek and wretched that Rob nerved himself to fresh efforts, and wrought miracles on her behalf, so that if by any chance she admired a plant in The Larches’ garden, that plant was transplanted bodily to Yew Hedge, and smiled a welcome to her on her next approach.
The gardener pointed out the folly of moving plants in bloom, and prophesied failure; but no failure came, for plants have their likes and dislikes, like other living creatures, and there is no doubt that they are more amiably disposed to some people than to others. If another man had been rash enough to disturb their flowering, they would have sulked for the rest of the season, and made him suffer for his boldness; but no plant ever sulked at Robert Darcy. He had simply to lay it down in any spot he liked, and, behold, it grew and flourished! His fingers seemed to possess the power to impart health and strength, and, thanks to his care, Peggy soon felt safe from ridicule, at least on the score of her garden, and could devote herself with an easy mind to the work indoors. She experienced the usual string of aggravations which are known to every one moving into a new house; tradesmen took twice the allotted time to fulfil an order, and eventually sent home the wrong article; patterns selected were invariably “out of stock”; escapes of gas made it necessary to deface newly decorated walls; and effects which were intended to be triumphs of artistic beauty, turned out snares and disappointments. From the lofty frame of mind which aims at nothing short of perfection, Peggy subsided by degrees into that resigned melancholy in which the exhausted strugglers feel that “anything will do,” if only, by chance, a house may be made fit to live in.