"Well, send him some soup or something. Has that last dozen of parish port all gone yet?" "I was thinking of another side to it," she confessed. "Don't you think this might be an excellent opportunity to get rid of him?" "Isn't that rather hitting a man when he's down?" "Well, it's perfectly certain you'll never hit him when he's up again. If you only realised how the man robs us--indirectly, I mean. He doesn't actually steal, I suppose, but look at the seed and the thousand and one things he's always wanting in the garden, and nothing to show but weeds." "You must be fair, Alice. There are miles of large, fat cabbages out there." "Cabbages, yes; and when I almost go down on my knees for one, he says they're not ready and mustn't be touched. He caught the cook getting a sprig of parsley yesterday, and was most insolent. She says that if he opens his mouth to her again she'll give warning; and she means it. And even you know that cooks are a thousand times harder to get than gardeners." Dennis sighed and looked at his manuscript. "Funny you should say these things--I'm preaching about the fruits of the earth next Sunday." "The man's maddening--always ready with an excuse. The garden must be swarming with every blight and horror that was ever known, according to him. And somehow I always feel he's being impertinent all the time he's speaking to me, though there's nothing you can catch hold of. Now it's mice, and now it's birds, and now it's canker in the air, or some nonsense; and now it's the east wind, and now it's the west wind--I'm sick of it; and if you ask for an onion he reminds you, with quite an injured air, that he took three into the house last week. There's a wretched cauliflower we had ages ago, and he's always talking about it still, as if it had been a pineapple at least." "I know he's tiresome. I tell you what--wait till he's back, and then I'll give him a serious talking to." "Only two days ago I met him lumbering up with that ridiculous basket he always will carry--a huge thing, large enough to hold a sack of potatoes. And in the bottom were three ridiculous little lettuces from the frame, about as long as your thumb. I remonstrated, and, of course, he was ready. 'I know to a leaf what his reverence eats,' he said; 'and if that woman in the kitchen, miscalled a cook, don't serve 'em up proper, that's not my fault.' He didn't seem to think I ever ate anything out of the garden." "Old scoundrel! I'll talk to him severely. I've had a rod in pickle ever since last year." Dennis laughed suddenly, but his sister was in no laughing mood. "I really can't see the funny side," she declared.