“What are you doing to your flowers?” she asked gently.  The gentle little child voice seemed to astonish the woman, although after an instant she made surly answer,—­

“Whose business is it?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier,” said Daisy, not looking at her, “if you had something to help you get the weeds up?  Don’t you want a fork, or a hoe, or something?”

“I’ve got forks,” said the cripple sullenly.  “I use ’em to eat with.”

“No, but I mean, something to help you with the weeds,” said Daisy—­“that sort of fork, or a trowel.”

The woman spread her brown fingers of both hands, like birds’ claws, covered with the dirt in which she had been digging.  “I’ve got forks enough,” she said savagely—­“them’s what goes into my weeds.  Now go ’long!—­”

The last words were uttered with a sudden jerk, and as she spoke them she plunged her hands into the dirt, and bringing up a double handful cast it with a spiteful fling upon the neat little black shoes.  Woe to white stockings, if they had been visible; but Daisy’s shoes came up high and tight around her ankle, and the earth thrown upon them fell off easily again; except only that it lodged in the eyelet holes of the boot lacing and sifted through a little there, and some had gone as high as the top of the boot and fell in.  Quite enough to make Daisy uncomfortable, besides that the action half frightened her.  She quitted the ground, went back to her pony chaise without even attempting to do anything with the contents of her basket.  Daisy could go no further with her feet in this condition.  She turned the pony’s head and drove back to Melbourne.

CHAPTER X.

“Will I take him to the stable, Miss Daisy?” inquired the boy, as Daisy got out at the back door.

“No.  Just wait a little for me, Lewis.”

Up stairs went Daisy; took off her boots and got rid of the soil they had brought home; that was the first thing.  Then, in spotless order again, she went back to Lewis and inquired where Logan was at work.  Thither she drove the pony chaise.

“Logan,” said Daisy coming up to him; she had left Loupe in Lewis’s care; “what do you use to help you get up weeds?”

“Maybe a hoe, Miss Daisy; or whiles a weeding fork.”

“Have you got one here?”

“No, Miss Daisy.  Was it a fork you were wanting?”

“Yes, I want one, Logan.”

“And will you be wanting it noo?”

“Yes, I want it now, if you please.”

“Bill, you go home and get Miss Daisy one o’ them small hand forks—­out o’ that new lot—­them’s slenderer.”

“And Logan, I want another thing.  I want a little rose bush—­and if you can, I want it with a rose open or a bud on it.”

“A rose bush!” said Logan.  “Ye want it to be set some place, nae doute?”

“Yes, I do; but I want to set it out myself, Logan; so it must not be too big a bush, you know, for I couldn’t manage it.”