“What I’m seeing, miss, all the time, is what could be done with ’em.  Wonderful it’d be.  They might be the show of the county-if we had Mr. Timson here.”

Miss Vanderpoel, standing in the sunshine on the broad weed-grown pathway, was conscious that he was remotely moving.  His flowers—­his flowers.  They had been the centre of his rudimentary rural being.  Each man or woman cared for some one thing, and the unfed longing for it left the life of the creature a thwarted passion.  Kedgers, yearning to stir the earth about the roots of blooming things, and doomed to broccoli and cabbage, had spent his years unfed.  No thing is a small thing.  Kedgers, with the earth under his broad finger nails, and his half apologetic laugh, being the centre of his own world, was as large as Mount Dunstan, who stood thwarted in the centre of his.  Chancing-for God knows what mystery of reason-to be born one of those having power, one might perhaps set in order a world like Kedgers’.

“In the course of twenty years’ work under Timson,” she said, “you must have learned a great deal from him.”

“A good bit, miss-a good bit,” admitted Kedgers.  “If I hadn’t ha’ cared for the work, I might ha’ gone on doing it with my eyes shut, but I didn’t.  Mr. Timson’s heart was set on it as well as his head.  An’ mine got to be.  But I wasn’t even second or third under him—­I was only one of a lot.  He would have thought me fine an’ impident if I’d told him I’d got to know a good deal of what he knew—­and had some bits of ideas of my own.”

“If you had men enough under you, and could order all you want,” Miss Vanderpoel said tentatively, “you know what the place should be, no doubt.”

“That I do, miss,” answered Kedgers, turning red with feeling.  “Why, if the soil was well treated, anything would grow here.  There’s situations for everything.  There’s shade for things that wants it, and south aspects for things that won’t grow without the warmth of ’em.  Well, I’ve gone about many a day when I was low down in my mind and worked myself up to being cheerful by just planning where I could put things and what they’d look like.  Liliums, now, I could grow them in masses from June to October.”  He was becoming excited, like a war horse scenting battle from afar, and forgot himself.  “The Lilium Giganteum—­I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen one, miss—­but if you did, it’d almost take your breath away.  A Lilium that grows twelve feet high and more, and has a flower like a great snow-white trumpet, and the scent pouring out of it so that it floats for yards.  There’s a place where I could grow them so that you’d come on them sudden, and you’d think they couldn’t be true.”

“Grow them, Kedgers, begin to grow them,” said Miss Vanderpoel.  “I have never seen them—­I must see them.”

Kedgers’ low, deprecatory chuckle made itself heard again,

“Perhaps I’m going too fast,” he said.  “It would take a good bit of expense to do it, miss.  A good bit.”