“Rash woman,” protested the gardener. “If you knew your son Samuel as well as I do——”
“I know he is my son, so he cannot be altogether a fool.”
The gardener bent his thick threatening eyebrows upon her.
“Do you know what else I have done?” she continued.
“I tremble to think,” replied the invalid.
“I have advertised for your suffragette in the Union Paper. Courtesy said what a mercy it would be if she should have got safely away and wouldn’t come back, so I advertised, just to show that I disagreed. I never knew her name, so I described her appearance....”
“Her little size ...” he said eagerly. “Her small and hollow eyes. Her darling-coloured hair that always blew forward along her cheeks....”
“Well, I didn’t put it like that,” said Mrs. Rust.
“She had such wonderful little hands,” said the gardener, upon whom a sick-bed had a softening, not to say maudlin effect. “You could see everything she thought in her hands. They were not very white, but pale brown. You might have mentioned them. But she is obviously mine. Nobody could overlook that. Nobody could overlook her at all.”
“On the contrary,” said Mrs. Rust, “she is a perfectly insignificant-looking young woman. And I am sure that she would strongly resent your describing her as though she were a dog with your name on its collar. She had sensible views about women.”