importation from China,' he
says. You go and call out what I told you, and he'll be so pleased, why,
I wouldn't say he won't shovel half of the garden into your hands
straight off."

"Do the young ladies take an interest in flowers?" Guy asked.

"Of course they try," said Birdwood, condescendingly. "But neither them
nor their mother don't seem to learn nothing. They think more of a good
clump of dellyphiniums than half a dozen meconopises as some one's gone
mad to discover, with a lot of murderous Lammers from Tibbet ready to
knife him the moment his back's turned."

"Really?"

"Oh, I was like that myself once. I can remember the time when I was as
fond of a good dahlia as anything. Now I goes sniffing the ground to see
if there's any _Mentha requieni_ left over from the frost."

"Sniffing the ground?"

"That's right. It's so small that if it wasn't for the smell any one
wouldn't see it. That's _worth_ growing, that is. Only, if you'll
understand me, it takes any one who's used to looking at peonies and
such like a few years to find out the object of a plant that isn't any
bigger than a pimple on an elephant."

Guy was reluctant to let Birdwood go without bringing him to talk more
directly of the family and less of the flowers. At the same time he felt
it would be wiser not to rouse in the gardener any suspicion of how much
he was interested in the Rectory; he was inclined to think he might
resent it, and he wanted him as a friend.

"Who is working in your garden?" asked Birdwood, as he turned to go.

"Well, nobody just at present," said Guy, apologetically.

"All right," Birdwood announced. "I'll get hold of some one for you in
less than half a pig's whisper."

"But not all the time," Guy explained, quickly. He was worried by the
prospect of a gardener's wages coming out of his small income.

"Once a week he'll come in," said Birdwood.

Guy nodded.

"What's his name?"

"Graves he's called, but, being deaf and dumb, his name's not of much
account."

"Deaf and dumb?" repeated Guy. "But how shall I explain what I want
done?"

"I'll show you," said Birdwood. "I'll come round and put you in the way
of managing him. Work? I reckon that boy would work any other mortal in
Wychford to the bone. Work? Well, he can't hear nothing, and he can't
say nothing, so what else can he do? And he does it. Good afternoon, Mr.
Hazlenut."

And Birdwood retired, whistling very shrilly as he went down the path to
the ga