The spade was deep in the stiff soil. The piece that Chalcraft had already turned up was wet and yellow in contrast to the hard gray of the untouched piece. Gainah watched him closely, as if he had been a stranger and digging was to her a new and intricate performance. She saw his bald head: there was a red, shining wen on one side. There were two careful patches, side by side and of a different color and stuff, on the back of his waistcoat. “You’ve got another patch on the back of your waistcoat, Master Chalcraft,” she said childishly. He spat thoughtfully, first on the palms of his hands and then into the trench where the weeds were buried. He looked at her--looked with the slow wonder of the aged, to whom nothing matters very much. Then he said, with a chuckle: “Aye! so there be! Patch side by side look neighborly, but patch upon patch be beggarly, Mis’ Toat.” She didn’t answer. She still stood in that wavering, uncertain way on the other side of the trench. “The worms in this ’ere patch is past believin’,” he said, with an infantile slobber and chuckle, at last, stolidly chopping through the writhing bunches. “It must be nearly dinner-time, Master Chalcraft,” said Gainah mechanically, with a steady glare across the trench with her pale eyes. “Aye, that it be,” he returned rather nervously; “I’ve had mine.” She turned and went back to the path. He stood and watched her. He was conscious, in his slow-witted way, that some queer change had come to her. The sun broke through the rain-cloud and touched the silver tip of his spade and the hard red lump on his head. He bent his back again and turned up slab after slab of sticky ground. Gainah went round to the front of the house. She had a bed of lilies of the valley beneath the umbrella yew. She stooped down behind the wall of somber green and saw the tender leaves uncurling. One root already had a cluster of snowy buds. Then, as she stooped, she heard a voice--the high, imperious voice of Pamela. Looking through the yew, she saw her standing by the wall with Jethro. She was talking very fast, moving impetuously now and then, throwing out her firm white hands, and pointing eagerly. “It would be the simplest thing in the world. Oh, you must do it--_please_. Then the house would look like Turle. You take away the gate and build the wall along--so. Then you take up those horrid cabbages.” She threw a look of intolerance at the leggy stalks of Brussels sprouts which were thickly covered with widely opened miniature cabbages. “Chalcraft likes this patch. It is the richest in the garden, so he says. In June the old man will dibble in his cauliflowers; they want a rich soil.” “They’ll grow anywhere; ground is ground,” she cried, with Cockney superiority. “You are too indulgent to Chalcraft; he and Gainah are past work. They should be pensioned off. She might be allowed to come to dinner on Sundays.” “She has been a mother to me.”