“Nicholas won’t listen to complaints about me,” Olver returned loftily. “He may curse me within our own doors, but no one from outside may say a word against me. If Mr. Warrener complains, he will only tell him not to employ me again. We don’t care whether we are given work or not, Nicholas and I don’t.” “You forget,” said Clare, “that my father sent for your brother and not for you.” “Ah, but he wouldn’t come, would he?” said Olver, highly amused. She was relieved to see that he had got out of his sinister mood and was again prepared to laugh and be childish. “You don’t know, because you didn’t see him, Miss Warrener, how he sat glowering at the fire last night, and ended by telling me that I could come here in his place. You don’t see him at nights, when he comes home tired and has to be patient with our mother. He’s patient with her, yes; but he’d get on better if he humoured her more: he’s too unbending.” “How shrewd you are, Olver,” Clare was surprised into saying. “Hoi, hoi,” said Olver, wagging his head. “I know my Nicholas; he’ll break sooner than bend. I told him he could come, and take the chance of not meeting--the person he didn’t want to meet; but he wouldn’t have that, not he. He’s stayed at home, to dig in the garden. Time and again, he takes a day or an afternoon off to do that, for he’s mighty fond of the garden, and that’s queer, seeing that his days are spent on the bare Downs, whether or not his business sends him there, where nothing grew that I ever saw, but sorrel and poor grasses.” Clare wondered how she could best end the conversation, in which Olver hovered evidently around some topic he might not broach, but she did not forbear from smiling when he mentioned Lovel in his garden; she had often seen the garden at the end of the long, tunnel-like passage as she turned down the village street; and the little picture of Lovel’s affection for it was like discovering a patch of sun in a thunderous landscape. Olver meanwhile had turned back to his planks and tools; he was fingering the latter; the little round mirror he had put carefully into his pocket. “I am a good carpenter, you know, Miss Warrener,” he said, as though he were letting her into a secret, and she saw that his attention had changed its object.