"Why, Teddy, what a splendid ideal!" cried Eileen, suddenly taking his suggestion seriously. "You never would do such a thing as that!" exclaimed Nora. "He would snap your head off." "Cheek, I call it," said Frank; "fancy even thinking of such a thing!" "Cheek or no cheek," said Teddy, "if Eileen is game, we'll do it! You kids can stop outside the gates while we go up and ask." [Illustration: "HULLO!" HE SAID. "WHAT DO YOU WANT?"] But Nora and Frank, though they strongly disapproved, had no intention of being left out of anything. Three minutes later the four youngsters presented themselves at the door of The Laurels. Their knock was answered, as it chanced, by Mr. Grimwood himself, who happened to be in the hall. "Hullo!" he said, in a voice far from encouraging. "What do you want?" He knew the children very well by sight, but as young people were not in his line, he had never cultivated their acquaintance. "Please," said Teddy, feeling rather small, "we—we wondered if you would like us to do a day's gardening." Mr. Grimwood was somewhat taken aback. As a matter of fact, a gardener was just what he was needing. The man he usually employed had left him a few weeks previously, and he had difficulty in finding another. "What do you mean?" he inquired gruffly, looking from Teddy to the others. "I don't want any of your impudence!" Then Eileen spoke—Eileen, with her pretty blue eyes, which were her chief beauty, raised half-pleadingly to his face. Few could resist the Bannister children. They were full of faults, it is true, but their winning dispositions gained them friends everywhere. "Please, Mr. Grimwood," she said, "it isn't meant for impudence. We would love to do a day's gardening if you would let us, and we'd only charge a very little." "H'm," said Mr. Grimwood, "and that little a good deal more than you're worth." But he was thinking over the suggestion all the same. After some further conversation, to the delight of Eileen and Teddy, and to the disgust of Nora and Frank, he agreed to employ them; and if they did the work satisfactorily, to pay them two shillings each at four o'clock. CHAPTER IV. Busy Gardeners. "I'LL show you what I want you to do, and then I will leave you to your work." With these words Mr. Grimwood led the way to the lawn on the right side of the house, where there were three large overgrown flower-beds. Here flourished flowers and weeds together in the friendliest of fashions. "I've been away," he said, "or these beds would have been looked after properly. I don't trouble much about the rest of the garden." Although Mr. Grimwood did not say so, the three flower-beds had once been the pride and delight of his wife, whom he had lost several years previously. "I suppose you know a flower from a weed?" he said, after giving several directions. "I should just think we do, sir," replied Frank, whom he chanced to address. And so said all the others.