“May be as your gardener just takes and hits it auver the top o' the ground, and lets it lie. That's no kind o' good, that beant—'tis the roots as wants the stuff; and you med jist as well take and put a round o' beef agin my back bwone as hit the stuff auver the ground, and never see as it gets to the roots o' the plants.”
“No, I don't think it can be that,” said Tom laughing; “our gardener seems always to be digging his manure in, but somehow he can't make it come out in flowers as you do.”
“Ther' be mwore waays o' killin' a cat besides choking on un wi' crame,” said Simon, chuckling in his turn.
“That's true Simon,” said Tom; “the fact is, a gardener must know his business as well as you to be always in bloom, eh?”
“That's about it, sir,” said Simon, on whom the flattery was beginning to tell.
Tom saw this, and thought he might now feel his way a little further with the old man.
“I'm over on a sad errand,” he said; “I've been to poor Widow Winburn's funeral—she was an old friend of yours, I think?”
“Ees; I minds her long afore she wur married,” said Simon, turning to his pots again.
“She wasn't an old woman, after all,” said Tom.
“Sixty-two year old cum Michaelmas,” said Simon.