54 IDLEHURST : 



circumstances, he sent up his son Henery as his sub- 

 stitute in the garden. Henery is about nineteen ; has 

 a lanky frame, like a skeleton in corduroys ; his boots 

 are enormous, and shuffle through the world sound- 

 ingly ; his face is freckled, his hair ginger-red, and his 

 eyes small, light, and shifty. I think he would be a 

 sorrow to his father, if the rubs of the world had left 

 in Bish any property so active as grief. Henery works 

 under protest ; every turn of the spade marks off the 

 time towards six o'clock, the rank pipe, the tea with 

 onions, the hour of the stroll " up-street " with Frenk 

 and Erree, of the badinage with Maery's or Loow- 

 easer's responsive charm. I hardly like to leave him 

 alone with my tulips, the flaming Keizerskroons and 

 soft Rose Luisantes that border the quarter where he 

 works. Those vast feet have a way of flattening, 

 with half-malicious clumsiness, any choice growth 

 they come near ; but I want to go and see Bish plre> 

 so after warnings, received in sullen silence, without a 

 moment's lifting of the dull eyes, I leave the youth 

 in the middle of a solid piece of digging and take the 

 field path to the cottage they call Dogkennel, in the 

 bottom by the brook. Small and damp and green, it 

 stands on the fringe of a large copse, round it a clayey 

 garden patch, containing little beyond the stubs of 

 the winter greens and last year's scarlet-runners 



