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"Don't you want a cup o' tea?" she asked. Sophy looked quite eager. It seemed to her that, with the garden resurrected, something was going to happen. Jim shook his head. "I'll dig round them rose-bushes," said he. "Then I'll go an' git some dressin'." "I'll pay for it," said Sophy. "You sha'n't have that to do." "It's no consequence," returned Jim indifferently.
"John," said Henry, "is gone to clean the pig-sty." The lady's-maid drew up her lip, and looked disgusted. "Faugh!" said she, "I shall not think of troubling him to cull the flowers." "Shall I get some for grandmamma?" asked Henry. She thanked him for his politeness, and accepted his offer. The little boy walked before her to where there was a bit of raised ground covered with rose-bushes.
There were high hedges and winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and it was a beauteous place deserted.
They took him down through the weeds around the garden, crouching under the rose-bushes, and at last stopped at a spot under the slope, completely surrounded by shrubbery. "Here is the spot," said Frank in a whisper, pointing under one of the bushes.
In and out among the rose-bushes of a tiny garden which was planted beneath the window of the hut, hopped several brown hares, seeming much at home. The old man's head nodded forward on his book. He could sleep soundly, it seemed, with all these little live things swarming about him.
This house was brilliantly lighted, and the rose-bushes and shade trees were all defined as they stood above the swells of green verdure and the ornamental paths and flower-beds.
Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed to the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little Bengal rose-bushes, to fill in worsted work, or to put on collars. Moreover, if a little girl in her tenth year has more refinement than a boy of twenty, she is timid and awkward.
They did not talk much more that night, for it was getting late, and Arthur sat looking at the lights and shadows in the burning coals. Out of doors the fair spring evening had darkened into a gusty night; and the wind was sighing in the trees, and blowing the rose-bushes against the windows. It was very comfortable sitting there on the hearth-rug with his head on his mother's lap.
"Cuckoo," came furtively from the cliff of pine-trees. "Georgie, pretty Georgie," and the other birds joined in with nonsense. The hedge was a half-painted picture which would be finished in a few days. Celandines grew on its banks, lords and ladies and primroses in the defended hollows; the wild rose-bushes, still bearing their withered hips, showed also the promise of blossom.
One pleasant morning little Birdie might have been seen sitting quietly on the grass-plat at the side of his mother's house, looking very earnestly at the rose-bushes. It was quite early; great Mr. Sun, who is such an early riser in summer time, had not been up very long; the birds were just beginning to chirp their "good-mornings" to each other; and as for the flowers, they were still asleep.
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