He shook a gnarled old fist at it out of the window, and heavily descended the narrow stairs.
Some threescore and ten summers had passed over Mr. Minnidick's head, and been darned by him, since he was born, yet still he laboured on as Mr. Bush's assistant in the grand, true life aimed at by Mrs. Verulam. His small and thin form was duly bent with years. His legs were bowed. His scanty grey hair fell adown his stooping shoulders, and his nut-cracker mouth, fallen in, moved incessantly as if he were trying to masticate invisible food. In fact, he lived up to his name and calling most thoroughly, and would have looked quite realistic in an Adelphi hay-field or Drury Lane cabbage scene. Emerging now into the garden, he glanced angrily around from under his shaggy eyebrows. He beheld a flat plot of ground bounded by tough hedges, in one of which stood a wicket-gate. There were beds of flowers, small paths, a thicket of trees, and a vegetable domain adorned with melon and cucumber frames against a moss-grown wall. Cherries were being forced in pots; beehives stood about; an old-fashioned brick flue had been turned into accommodation for some mysterious fruit; a small brick house, about as big as a loose-box with a roof to it, and devoid of windows, sheltered a pit in which mushroom-spawn was germinating in dense darkness and dull heat. Elsewhere stood two or three rather ramshackle outhouses. The Farm itself was a small and plain building, with narrow windows almost blinded with creepers, a door in the middle, and protruding eaves like Mr. Minnidick's eyebrows. Flattish land stretched away to the horizon on every side, steaming now in the gathering light of the morning. Mr. Minnidick surveyed this prospect and continued:
"Darn it all, I say!"
This sentence had been his morning hymn of praise for more than half a century, and it was quite certain that he would only cease to uplift it with the coming of death. His matins completed, Mr. Minnidick took his way to one of the outhouses, making a slight detour on the journey to glance at some marl and a pet manure tank, and, selecting from various implements a favourite hoe, and an enormous spade, returned to the kitchen-garden, prepared his hands for labour in the usual manner, and began performing various mysterious rites among the cabbages, peas, potatoes and other vegetables with which Mr. Bush's estate was liberally endowed. Now and then he desisted from labour for a moment, and on these occasions he invariably looked towards the wicket-gate and muttered, "He's a beauty—darn 'im!" a statement which seemed to bring with it great satisfaction, and to cause a certain amount of exultation in Mr. Minnidick's earnest and retiring soul. Towards seven o'clock, as Mr. Minnidick was looking towards the gate for the twentieth or so time, and was in the very act of opening his purse-like mouth in his age-honoured and terse remark, there appeared before him a vision that seemed to fill him with amazement. For he dropped the favourite hoe among some sprouts, set his hands over his eyes, let fall his lower jaw, and stared as one that sees a ghost.
"Darn it all!" he murmured. "If it ain't 'im aback a'ready! Darn it all, I say!"
"'Im" signified the paragon, who had indeed at that very instant ridden up to the gate on the Emperor's head coachman's tricycle, and who now dismounted therefrom with much groaning, and walked unsteadily into the garden, the pockets of his coat bulging with the silver whisky-bottle and the gold presentation cigar-box. He approached the sprouts among which his retainer was standing, and gave the latter a sulky nod of the head, to which Mr. Minnidick returned a nod that was, if possible, sulkier.
"How's the vegs?" mumbled Mr. Bush.
"Mortial spoilt by rain—darn 'em!" replied Mr. Minnidick. "Mortial spoilt."
And he stared harder than ever at Mr. Bush, whose saturated evening costume was now beginning to steam in the sun.
"What's brought ye back s' soon?" he enquired.