“Yes. But most of it’s grass and that’s looked after by a contractor,” explained Verity and felt angrily that she was adopting an apologetic, almost a cringing, attitude.

“Ou aye,” said Mr. Gardener again. He beamed down upon her. “And I can see fine that it’s highly prized by its leddy-mistress.”

Verity mumbled self-consciously.

They got down to tin-tacks. Gardener’s baggage had arrived. He produced glowing references from, as Sybil had said, grand employers, and photographs of their quellingly superior grounds. He was accustomed, he said, to having at the verra least a young laddie working under him but realized that in coming to keep his sister company in her berrreavement, puir lassie, he would be obliged to dra’ in his horns a wee. Ou, aye.

They arrived at wages. No wonder, thought Verity, that Sybil had hurried over the topic: Mr. Gardener required almost twice the pay of Angus McBride. Verity told herself she ought to say she would let him know in the morning and was just about to do so when he mentioned that Friday was the only day he had left and in a panic she suddenly closed with him.

He said he would be glad to work for her. He said he sensed they would get along fine. The general impression was that he preferred to work at a derisive wage for somebody he fancied rather than for a pride of uncongenial millionaires and/or noblemen, however open-handed.

On that note they parted.

Verity walked up the lane through the scents and sounds of a spring evening. She told herself that she could afford Gardener, that clearly he was a highly experienced man and that she would have kicked herself all round her lovely garden if she’d funked employing him and fallen back on the grossly incompetent services of the only other jobbing gardener now available in the district.