Miss Percival was very deliberate.
Presently she spoke. "You didn't tell me this afternoon that you'd had a
bother with Mr. Menzies. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why should I tell you?" The words seemed wrung from him. "Why should you
care?"
"Of course I care," she said. "You know that I care. Why didn't you tell
me? ... But I know why you didn't."
"You do not." He denied her hotly.
"Oh, but I do. Because you were ashamed."
"It was not. I'm not ashamed. He's an old fool. He thinks he can teach me
my business. Melons! Plants! Why, I'm one of them. What can he teach me?"
"He's a very good gardener," Miss Percival began, but the rest was
drowned.
"Gardener--he! He's a botcher. He measures his melons by the pound. It's
money he wants, money-value. So much dung--so much meat. He says, 'Be
careful, you, of the water-pot; go steady with your syringe. You'll damp
off those plants it you're not handy,' he tells me. To me, this! Don't I
know what the life of a plant must have, and how, and where it must be
fed? He's an old fool, and you know it. And I'll not be told things I have
got by heart before a lad new to his breeches. Besides," he added darkly,
"he'd vexed me before that, and bitterly.
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