"Oh, how dreadfully, dreadfully tiresome! We will have to wait weeks and weeks before we can get it, and it will keep everything back." Peggy wrung her tired hands and looked the image of despair. "You said that you were sure fourteen pieces would be enough; and we told you at the time to be careful, as it had to be made!" "Ay, it do seem a pity, don't it? They rarely ever gets it the same shade a second time," the man replied blandly. Then he jerked his thumb towards the flower-beds, and put a deprecatory question: "Didn't you like them, then? Wasn't they your fancy?" "I don't know what you are talking about. Was what my fancy?" "Those 'ere things as they put in yesterday. I thought, maybe, they was something special, from the care they took about 'em." He gave an explanatory kick with his foot to the weeds piled up on the gravel path, and there was a pause of two whole minutes before a weak little voice inquired faintly: "Who took such care? Who put them in? I don't understand." "The young master up at The Larches and one of his gardeners. They was here for a good two hours. We wondered to see you scratching them up. Joe says to me, he says, `Go down and tell her,' he says. `Oh,' I says, `she knows what she's about!' I says. `She's not the sort to do a trick like that,' I says." Peggy's lips positively ached with the effort of twisting them into a smile. "That was very kind of you," she said. "It would be a silly trick, would it not? Do you think you could boil the kettle for me now? I feel badly in need of some tea." CHAPTER TWELVE. Rob received Peggy's confession of her latest gardening exploit with a roar of good-natured laughter. She had been afraid lest he might be angry, or--what would have been even worse--superior and forbearing; but he was neither the one nor the other. Such a genuine, Peggy-Pickle trick, he declared, was worth taking some trouble to enjoy, and went far towards consoling him for the advent of a fashionable young lady in the place of his mischievous little friend. His generosity was not sufficient, however, to prevent him from enlarging on the exceeding beauty of the seedlings which had been so ruthlessly disturbed, and Peggy listened in an agony to a string of names wherein syllables ran riot. _Salpiglossis_! Alas, alas! she had not the faintest idea what the flower was like, but the name was exquisite, all-satisfying. It rolled off her tongue with sonorous effect. To speak of it alone would have been joy. She looked so meek and wretched that Rob nerved himself to fresh efforts, and wrought miracles on her behalf, so that if by any chance she admired a plant in The Larches' garden, that plant was transplanted bodily to Yew Hedge, and smiled a welcome to her on her next approach.