Part 14

"Then you were wrong. But I remember now, I was studying its picture this morning in the catalogue. Tritoma stands for red-hot poker. It will look fine at the back."

"Well, you are getting on," said the Young Man, in tones of admiration. "But why won't they say 'poker' and have done with it?"

"I wish they would. It is very trying of them. See what a lot you are learning. This is much more improving for a son of Adam than visiting old women and babies."

"Much! And I like it much better, which shows it is good for me."

"Ah, I don't know about that. Still, it does strike me as absurd to send a young man fresh from college to visit old women and babies. I can't think what you say to them."

"I say 'Did ums was ums' to the babies. But I am not quite fresh from college, you know. I talk some kind of sense to the mothers; at least, I hope so."

He was making a big hole and I was holding out a big root to fill it.

"This is galega. It is rather tall and so must go at the back. I don't mean you never talk sense, though I consider it insulting to address a baby like that. They look so preternaturally grave that Greek would suit them better. But I mean it isn't a man's work, it is a woman's."

"Galega! that means pok--no, larkspur! You see I am getting quite learned. There, it fits in beautifully."

"Press the roots firmly or they don't take hold," I observed.

"So. I always find your conversation very improving. My mother says the same things to me, I mean about old women."

I had walked down the path for another root. He went on when I came back,

"But you know the old women, and young ones too, like a visit from their clergy. The clergyman and doctor are great boons in their lives."

"Poor souls, I know they are very hard up. Even I am considered a boon, especially when I go round with puddings and things."

"Or without!" and he looked up quickly, "I should think so if--but"--and his voice changed--"I do understand what you mean. This is Adam's work, eh? Only the other is the vineyard too, and we, I--I mean, need the experience it gives me. They live at the root of things, touch life so nearly. It is something like coming in touch, actual touch, with the brown earth. Do you see what I am trying to say?"

I looked up at him from my plants, at this tall young man in a bicycling suit of semi-clerical cut, with his keen face and earnest eyes, whom we had fallen into the way of treating in almost brotherly fashion since his Reverence had adopted him as his Young Man as well as curate. He had broken down in some Midland town from overwork and come to Fairleigh to recruit and study and fill in a convalescent time. As a rule we did not like the curates.

"I think you are right," I said, "but somehow I feel I am right too in a way. One can't be saving souls all the time--one's own or other people's--and here, as you say, is Adam's work, the brown earth."

He laughed. "And here is Eve naming the flowers! I am sure Eve kept Adam to the digging while she picked the fruit."

"How men do love that old allegory! Personally I don't think they come out of it so well that they need quote it so often. However, as it gives them all the backbone, I feel quite absolved when I ask them to use it!"

The Young Man rose up. "Ah! if Eve had had the spirit of her daughters!"

"Here is a very large phlox, please dig that hole bigger," I interrupted, and as we carefully placed it in position, down the path came his Reverence and the Master.

"Oh!" I shouted, "come and see all my new arrivals; I am going to cut you out!"

The Master examined our work over his spectacles, and looked up and down the border critically, ending his survey with an unpromising "Humph."

Something was very wrong, evidently. My hopeful spirits sank.

"Have we been doing anything very ignorant? Don't you put plants straight into the earth? Will they all die?"

The Master laughed.

"Let us hope things are not as desperate as all that. I was looking at your border. Oh, what pauper fare! and what a lot of rubbish in it. Licence has reigned here for many a long year."

"For over twenty," I exclaimed savagely. "Griggs has been here quite that time."