"Well, well," said she, softening; "but ye see it never rains with a hot sun, and the flowers they know that; and look to be watered after Nature, or else they take it amiss. You, and all your sort, sir, you think to be stronger than Nature; you do fast and pray all day, and won't look at a woman like other men; and now you wants to water the very flowers at noon!"
"Betty," said Leonard smiling, "I yield to thy superior wisdom, and I will water them at morn and eve. In truth we have all much to learn: let us try and teach one another as kindly as we can."
"I wish you'd teach me to be as humble as you be," blurted out Betty, with something very like a sob: "and more respectful to my betters," added she, angrily.
Watering the flowers she had given him became a solace and a delight to the solitary priest: he always watered them with his own hands, and felt quite paternal over them.
One evening Mrs. Gaunt rode by with Griffith, and saw him watering them. His tall figure, graceful, though inclined to stoop, bent over them with feminine delicacy; and the simple act, which would have been nothing in vulgar hands, seemed to Mrs. Gaunt so earnest, tender, and delicate in him, that her eyes filled, and she murmured, "Poor Brother Leonard!"
"Why, what's wrong with him now?" asked Griffith, a little peevishly.
"That was him watering the flowers."
"O, is that all?" said Griffith, carelessly.
Leonard said to himself, "I go too little abroad among my people." He made a little round, and it ended in Hernshaw Castle.