Part 4

"Bulbs! Oh, there wur a few wot the Rector give me some toime back lars year. They didn't come to much. Never knows with bulbs, you don't!"

"Oh! but bulbs ought to come up."

"Some on 'em do, some times. Don't 'old myself with them furrin koinds."

"What, not with Dutch bulbs? Why, they grow the best kind in Holland."

"Maybe they do; over there. P'haps this soil didn't soute 'em. Wot I found diggin' the beds I put in them two round beds on the lawn. They wasn't no great quantity. Most on 'em perished loike, it 'pears to me."

"Perhaps you did not put them in right," I ventured. "How deep should you plant them?"

Oh! how ignorant I was. I did not feel even sure that I knew the right side up of a bulb.

Griggs gave a hoarse chuckle.

"They don't need to go fur in; 'bout so fur," and he made a movement that might indicate an inch or a yard; "but there's lots o' contrairy things that may 'appen to bulbs same as to most things. En'mies is wot there is in gardins, all along o' the curse."

Griggs was clerk; he never forgot that post of vantage. He looked at me as he said the word "curse." I wondered if his mind had made the connection between Eve and her daughter. But to return to the bulbs. Were worms the enemies in this particular case?

I knew they buried cities and raised rocks, and were our best diggers and fertilisers, because I had once read Darwin on the subject; but were they the enemies of bulbs?

"I am going to take the garden in hand a bit," I said after a pause. "I think it needs it."

"Well, I could do wi' a bit o' elp," and he wiped more mud from his spade to his hands, and from his hands to his trousers, and then back again, until I wondered what his wife did with him when she got him home. "But I reckon a boy 'ud be more 'andy loike. There's a lot o' talk," he added, half to himself.

I remembered with a feeling of pain how our old cook and factotum had received the news that I was taking cooking lessons in much the same spirit; but my newly-found energy was not going to be suppressed by Griggs.

"I am going to order some more bulbs," I began.

"Ah! you might do that. The gardin needs things puttin' into it, that's what it needs."

I looked at him sternly. "And things taken out of it too. I never knew such a place for weeds."

"No more didn't I. It's fearful bad soil for weeds; but maybe if there warn't so much room for 'em they'd get sort of crowded out."

"You have been here a good many years," I said, not without an afterthought.

"Yes; that's wot I 'ave been. I come first in ole Mr Wood's time; 'e was a 'and at roses, 'e was; somethin' loike we 'ad the place then, me an' 'im. Then Mr 'Erbert took it, that's when ole Woods, 'is father as 'twere, doied. But 'e didn't stay long; went fur a missunairy 'e did to them furrin parts and never come back, 'e didn't neither. Then come Mr Cooper, ten years, no, 'levin, he was 'ere and never did a bit to the gardin; took no interes', no cuttin's, no seeds, no manure, no nothink. That's 'ow the weeds overmastered us."

"But at least you might have dug up the weeds."

"Allays callin' me away for some'ot, they was. The Bath chair for 'is sister as lived with 'im, allays some'ot. Talk o' gardinin'! The weeds just come."

Then his tone brightened a bit; the Bath chair had been an unpleasing retrospect.

"But if the Rector looks to spend a bit, we might get some good stuff in." A pause, and a searching look at the setting sun. "I must be going. Got a bit to see to up at my place. Can't never git round with these short days."

Griggs collected his implements and with fine independence walked off, giving me a backward nod and a "Good evenin', miss. We could do wi' a few bulbs and such loike."

I was to divide Griggs's time with his Reverence, but Griggs seemed quite able to dispose of it himself.

* * * * *

I opened a strong wooden box with much interest and examined the result of my first venture in bulbs. Brown paper bags full of little seeds in which were carefully packed the firm dry brown roots, big and little, round and oblong. How wonderful that these "dead bones" should be capable of springing up into the glories of sight and smell foretold by my catalogue. This withered brown ball a hyacinth! unfolding, unfolding, until green tips, broadening leaves, and at last a massive crown of flowers appear. And the magician's wand to work this transformation? Just the good old brown earth, the common rain, and the wonderful work-a-day sun.