plants. "Are you quite sure they're wrong, Mrs.
Talcott?"

"Dead sure," Mrs. Talcott made reply. "He did it this morning when I was
in the dairy. He didn't understand, or got muddled, or something. I'll
commence changing them round as soon as I've done this weeding. It'll be
a good two hours' work."

"No, you must not do it till I can help you," said Karen. "To-morrow
morning." She had a manner at once deferential and masterful of
addressing the old lady. They were friendly without being intimate. "Now
promise me that you will wait till I can help you."

"Well, I guess I won't promise. I like to get things off my mind right
away," said Mrs. Talcott. If Karen was masterful, she was not yielding.
"I'll see how the time goes after tea. Don't you bother about it."

They left her bending again over her beds. "She is very strong, but I
think sometimes she works too hard," said Karen.

By a winding way she led him to the high flagged garden with its
encompassing trees and far blue prospect, and here they sat for a little
while in the sunlight and talked. "How different all this must be from
your home in Northumberland," said Karen. "I have never been to
Northumberland. Is your brother much there? Is he like you? Have you
brothers and sisters?"

She questioned him with the frank interest with which he wished to
question her. He told her about Oliver and said that he wasn't like
himself. A faint flavour of irony came into his voice in speaking of his
elder brother and finding Karen's calm eyes dwelling on him he wondered
if she thought him unfair. "We always get on well enough," he said, "but
we haven't much in common. He is a good, dull fellow, half alive."

"And you are very much alive."

"Yes, on the whole, I think so," he answered, smiling, but sensitively
aware of a possible hint of irony in her. But she had intended none. She
continued to look at him calmly. "You are making use of all of yourself;
that is to be alive, Tante always says; and I feel that it is true of
you. And his wife? the wife of the dull hunting brother? Does she hunt
too and think of foxes most?"

He could assure her that Betty quite made up in the variety of her
activities for Oliver's deficiencies. Karen was interested in the
American Betty and especially in hearing that she had been at the
concert from which their own acquaintance dated. She asked him, walking
back to the house, if he had seen Mrs. Forrester. "She is an old friend
of yours