“You was born a gardener, miss—­born one,” he had said months ago.

It was the time when flower beds must be planned for the coming year.  Her notebook was filled with memoranda of the things they must talk about.

It was good, normal, healthy work to do.  The scent of the rich, damp, upturned mould was a good thing to inhale.  They walked from one end to another, stood before clumps of shrubs, and studied bits of wall.  Here a mass of blue might grow, here low things of white and pale yellow.  A quickly-climbing rose would hang sheets of bloom over this dead tree.  This sheltered wall would hold warmth for a Marechal Niel.

“You must take care of it all—­even if I am not here next year,” Miss Vanderpoel said.

Kedgers’ absorbed face changed.

“Not here, miss,” he exclaimed.  “You not here!  Things wouldn’t grow, miss.”  He checked himself, his weather-toughened skin reddening because he was afraid he had perhaps taken a liberty.  And then moving his hat uneasily on his head, he took another.  “But it’s true enough,” looking down on the gravel walk, “we—­we couldn’t expect to keep you.”

She did not look as if she had noticed the liberty, but she did not look quite like herself, Kedgers thought.  If she had been another young lady, and but for his established feeling that she was somehow immune from all ills, he would have thought she had a headache, or was low in her mind.

She spent an hour or two with him, and together they planned for the changing seasons of the year to come.  How she could keep her mind on a thing, and what a head she had for planning, and what an eye for colour!  But yes—­there was something a bit wrong somehow.  Now and then she would stop and stand still for a moment, and suddenly it struck Kedgers that she looked as if she were listening.

“Did you think you heard something, miss?” he asked her once when she paused and wore this look.

“No,” she answered, “no.”  And drew him on quickly—­almost as if she did not want him to hear what she had seemed listening for.

When she left him and went back to the house, all the loveliness of spring, summer and autumn had been thought out and provided for.  Kedgers stood on the path and looked after her until she passed through the terrace door.  He chewed his lip uneasily.  Then he remembered something and felt a bit relieved.  It was the service he remembered.

“Ah! it’s that that’s upset her—­and it’s natural, seeing how she’s helped him and Dunstan village.  It’s only natural.”  He chewed his lip again, and nodded his head in odd reflection.  “Ay!  Ay!” he summed her up.  “She’s a great lady that—­she’s a great lady—­same as if she’d been born in a civilised land.”