"No, daddy, that I really can't allow," he declared, folding the plaid round the little figure. It was rather like trying to wrap up a flea, for Mr. Gardiner made a dive in the middle to uproot a daisy. "You must remember you're an invalid. You sit on the seat and superintend. Vamos, hombre—that's better. Now, what do you want done?"
"The whole place is in a disgraceful state," said the invalid rebelliously. "Disgraceful. It wants digging over from end to end. Look at the lawn! That's a dandelion, I declare!"
He made another dart, again frustrated by his laughing son. "Here, you come and sit on him, Tom, while I mow the lawn!" Tom rather reluctantly sat down and kept his father anchored by the arm, while Gardiner plied the spud with more energy than skill, earning nothing but abuse from the ungrateful invalid.
"You young folk think you can do everything!" he said irately. "I know you! You'll be getting up into my pulpit next. I'll preach next Sunday, no matter what you say, on the dangers of conceit. Nice incapable pair of sons I have!"
The sun shone, the doves purred in the lime-trees, and Mr. Gardiner scolded his sons with all his energetic soul because they wouldn't let him dig over the asparagus beds. He had prolonged his life to this his sixty-ninth year on cod-liver oil, and was now recovering from an attack of hemorrhage. He had had three in the past four years, but he could never be persuaded to take any precautions. He kept his sons in perpetual anxiety, tempered, at least for Gardiner, by faith in his luck. He had deserved to die a dozen times, but he never had; and Gardiner found it hard to believe he ever would.
You cannot know a man thoroughly till you have seen him in his home. He may be more truly himself away from it; but his relations with his family always contribute something to the sum of his character. Woodlands was Harry Gardiner's home; those woods had been the background and the vicarage the foreground of his childhood. The income of the living was one hundred and seventy pounds, and Mrs. Gardiner had besides sixty pounds a year of her own. After deducting life assurance, expense of collection and rates (which the unhappy parson whose stipend comes from tithe pays on the whole of his income, as well as on the ratable value of his house), there was left about one hundred and forty pounds to live on. That, for four persons, is poverty: not want, but wholesome, bracing poverty. Many a time had Gardiner blessed his early training to endure hardness. He blessed also the memory of his big, breezy, soft-hearted, hot-tempered, quick-witted mother. Two pictures rose in his mind whenever Gardiner thought of her. In one she was chopping suet with La Hermana San Sulpicio propped on the kitchen scales before her nose; in the other she was boxing the ears of a choir-boy who sang flat. She was half Spanish, and had been brought up as a Roman Catholic; but she 'verted so completely that she was able to remain a High Churchwoman, and to enjoy hearing Mass from time to time. She died during Harry's first voyage, of measles, caught in Sunday school.
Gardiner lounged on the seat, his labors ended, with an affectionate arm thrown round his father's shoulders. Presently the postman came in sight, and Tom went to take the letters, which were delivered at Woodlands only once a day. There was a moneylender's circular for the vicar, a love letter for himself and a whole sheaf for Harry, sent on from Rochehaut, which he had left at a moment's notice, in answer to Tom's telegram. Tom, absorbed in his charming May, Mr. Gardiner, inveighing against the slackness of the Government, failed to notice, either of them, the startling change in Harry's face as he examined his share of the post.
"Daddy, I'm sorry to say I've got to go."
He was already on his feet, crushing the letter in his hand. Mr. Gardiner looked up.
"Go? You can't go, it's just dinner-time. I never knew anybody so restless as you two boys; you can't be still a moment!" This was indeed Satan rebuking sin. "Where do you want to go to?"