We took the stack of pot-stands off one by one. Six or eight of them were perfectly clean, as if just wiped out. Jenkins gave his opinion again.
“Them clean saucers have all had the stuff burning in ’em this night, and they’ve done their work well. Somebody, which it must be the villain himself, has been in and cleaned ’em out, overlooking one of ’em. I can be upon my word the stands were all dusty enough last Tuesday, when the greenhouse was emptied for the ball, for I stacked ’em myself one upon another.”
Tod took up his perch on the edge of the shut-in brick stove, and surveyed the wreck. There was not a bit of green life remaining, not a semblance of it. When he had done looking he stared at me, then at Jenkins; it was his way when puzzled or perplexed.
“Have you seen anybody about here this morning, Jenkins?”
“Not a soul,” responded Jenkins, ruefully. “I was about the beds and places at first, and when I came up here and opened the door, the smoke and smell knocked me back’ards. When I see the plants—leastways what was the plants—with their leaves and blossoms and stems all black and blasted, I says to myself, ‘The devil must have been in here;’ and I was on my way to tell the master so when you two young gents met me.”
“But it’s time some of them were about,” cried Tod. “Where’s Drew? Is he not come?”
“Drew be hanged for a lazy vagabond!” retorted old Jenkins. “He never comes on much afore seven, he doesn’t. Monk threatened last week to get his wages stopped for him. I did stop ’em once, afore I was ill.”
Drew was the under-gardener, an active young fellow of nineteen. There was a boy as well, but it happened that he was away just now. Almost as Jenkins spoke, Drew came in view, leaping along furiously towards the vegetable garden, as though he knew he was late.
“Halloa, Drew!”