‘She’s not a good teacher,’ said Miss Bulstrode. ‘Surprising really. Her testimonials were so good.’

‘The French never can teach. No discipline,’ said Miss Chadwick. ‘And really Miss Springer is a little too much of a good thing! Leaps about so. Springer by nature as well as by name…’

‘She’s good at her job.’

‘Oh yes, first class.’

‘New staff is always upsetting,’ said Miss Bulstrode.

‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Chadwick eagerly. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing more than that. By the way, that new gardener is quite young. So unusual nowadays. No gardeners seem to be young. A pity he’s so good-looking. We shall have to keep a sharp eye open.’

The two ladies nodded their heads in agreement. They knew, none better, the havoc caused by a good-looking young man to the hearts of adolescent girls.

Chapter 7

Straws in the Wind

‘Not too bad, boy,’ said old Briggs grudgingly, ‘not too bad.’

He was expressing approval of his new assistant’s performance in digging a strip of ground. It wouldn’t do, thought Briggs, to let the young fellow get above himself.

‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘you don’t want to rush at things. Take it steady, that’s what I say. Steady is what does it.’

The young man understood that his performance had compared rather too favourably with Briggs’s own tempo of work.

‘Now, along this here,’ continued Briggs, ‘we’ll put some nice asters out. She don’t like asters—but I pay no attention. Females has their whims, but if you don’t pay no attention, ten to one they never notice. Though I will say She is the noticing kind on the whole. You’d think she ’ad enough to bother her head about, running a place like this.’

Adam understood that ‘She’ who figured so largely in Briggs’s conversation referred to Miss Bulstrode.

‘And who was it I saw you talking to just now?’ went on Briggs suspiciously, ‘when you went along to the potting shed for them bamboos?’

‘Oh, that was just one of the young ladies,’ said Adam.

‘Ah. One of them two Eye-ties, wasn’t it? Now you be careful, my boy. Don’t you get mixed up with no Eye-ties, I know what I’m talkin’ about. I knew Eye-ties, I did, in the first war and if I’d known then what I know now I’d have been more careful. See?’

‘Wasn’t no harm in it,’ said Adam, putting on a sulky manner. ‘Just passed the time of day with me, she did, and asked the names of one or two things.’

‘Ah,’ said Briggs, ‘but you be careful. It’s not your place to talk to any of the young ladies. She wouldn’t like it.’

‘I wasn’t doing no harm and I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t.’

‘I don’t say you did, boy. But I say a lot o’ young females penned up together here with not so much as a drawing master to take their minds off things—well, you’d better be careful. That’s all. Ah, here comes the Old Bitch now. Wanting something difficult, I’ll be bound.’