“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own drainage----. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.” Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes, and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the stick with which he was to drive; but he pleaded that he was waiting for Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky. “Ah I my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us how she looks; and, mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,--any radishes, or whatever else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming by that child’s crying.” “O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan. “Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had; and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him so?” “I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears, “that I treat him differently from the rest; but the child is not well. His chilblains tease him terribly, and I wish there may be nothing worse.” “Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall see an end of the fretting.--Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse than chilblains, I can tell you.” Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner, Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving. “Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away to go to the garden, “Allan is the one to manage, him. He can take as good care of him as any woman without spoiling him!” Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that she did not deserve it.