“To make otter of roses,” answered Tasker. “I sell ’em to the distillers.”
“At any rate, though it be as you say, I would have taken them openly,” contended Tod. “Not come like a thief in the night.”
“But then I had to get ’em afore the sun was powerful,” calmly answered Tasker.
Tod was silent all the way home. I had not spoken a word, good or bad. Betty brought in the coffee.
“Pour it out,” said he to me. “But, Johnny,” he presently added, as he stirred his cup slowly round, “I can’t think how it was that Copperas forget to tell me he had sold the roses.”
“Do you suppose he did forget?”
“Why, of course he forgot. Would an honest man like Copperas conceal such a thing if he did not forget it? You will be insinuating next, Johnny Ludlow, that he is as bad as Tasker.”
I must say we were rather in the dumps that day. Tod went off fishing; I carried the basket and things. I did wish I had not said so much about the roses to Mrs. Todhetley. What I wrote was, that they were brighter and sweeter and better than those other roses by Bendemeer’s stream.
I thought of the affair all day long. I thought of it when I was going to bed at night. Putting out the candle, I leaned from my window and looked down on the desolate garden. The roses had made its beauty.
“Johnny! Johnny lad! Are you in bed?”