Suddenly, just as Fitcher was about to step on the cracked flag-stones of the threshold, a figure appeared in the main doorway. It was the young gardener: he was dressed all proper-fashion now, in a jacket and hat, but in his hands he was holding a stout stick.

Fitcher came to a halt. ‘There’s no need to be getting eerself in a spudder now.’ Placing his machete on the ground, he stuck out his hand: ‘I’m Frederick Penrose – they call me Fitcher. I mean’ee no harm.’

‘That is for me to decide sir,’ said the youth, briskly, ignoring his hand. ‘And my jugement must wait until I know what has brought you here.’

His English, Fitcher noted, was perfectly fluent, yet there was something puzzling about it – not just the pallyvouzing idiom but also the intonation, which contained some notes that were strangely reminiscent of the speech of lascar crewmen.

‘I await your answer, sir,’ said the youth, with a hint of asperity.

Fitcher shifted his feet and scratched his beard. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe both of us have come for the same thing.’

The youth frowned, as though he were trying to make sense of this statement, and on looking at him closely, Fitcher realized that he was even younger than he had thought, so young that his cheeks still had their adolescent bloom: indeed he was of an age at which many another fellow would have betrayed some apprehension, if not fear – yet there was no tremor in his voice, nor any other sign of the midgetty-morrows.

‘I do not understand, sir,’ said the gardener, ‘how you can speak of our purposes being the same when you do not know the raisons for my being here?’

‘It’s just that I see’d’ee back there,’ said Fitcher, ‘digging a hole to pitch that cactus.’

At this the gardener narrowed his eyes for a moment, and then a slight smile appeared on his face. ‘I think you are misled, sir,’ he said. ‘It is a long while since I touched a cactus.’

It was Fitcher’s turn to be puzzled now: he could not understand why the lad would go to the trouble of dissimulating over a matter like this. ‘What’re ee getting at, boy?’ he said a little testily. ‘Ee had a cactus in eer hands back there. I see’d’e with m’own eyes – ee can scarcely disknowledge it.’

The youth shrugged in a matter-of-fact way. ‘It is of no great consequence sir: just a simple meprise. Your error is so common that it may be easily forgiven.’

‘What’s that then?’ Fitcher was not used to being patronized in matters botanical and he bridled. ‘D’ee think I’m so green a gardener I wouldn’t know a cactus?’

The youth’s smile widened. ‘Since you are so sure of yourself, Mr Penrose, perhaps you would care to lay with me a wager?’

‘That’s what ee’re after, is it?’

Although not a betting man, Fitcher plunged a hand into his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar. ‘Here I’ll wager ee this – and I hope ee can match it too.’