“I hope you will not do so,” said Fanny, “remember that God hates them even more than papa or anybody else can do, and He knows when you tell an untruth, although no human being may find it out.”
After dinner Norman appeared to have recovered his spirits, and Fanny took him out to play battledore and shuttlecock.
They were beginning to get tired, when Mrs Leslie and their mamma came out.
“Come and walk with us, my dears,” said Mrs Leslie, “I want to show your mamma the pretty garden you have cultivated so nicely, Fanny.”
Fanny would thankfully have prevented them from seeing her garden, for she knew that the way Norman had treated it would be discovered. Still she could not think how to avoid going, and she could only hope that the gardener had put it to rights, as he had promised to do.
Mrs Leslie, wishing to gain her grandson’s confidence, called to him, and taking his hand, led him on talking to him kindly; Fanny and her mamma followed at a little distance.
Mrs Vallery interested Fanny by giving her accounts of India, but she was so anxious about her garden and the vexation her granny would feel at seeing it destroyed, that she could not listen as attentively as she otherwise would have done. She saw that Norman was walking on very unwillingly, and from time to time making an effort to escape, but his grandmamma had no intention of letting him go.
At length Mrs Leslie and Norman reached Fanny’s garden.
“Why, my dear, what changes you have made!” she exclaimed, “and I see you have dug up nearly half of it.”
Fanny ran forward. The gardener had begun to set it to rights, but had evidently been prevented from finishing the work. The two spades were stuck in the ground where Fanny and Norman had left them.