Mrs. Delacy was watching him. She had a very small flowerpot in her hand with one tiny African violet leaf buried in it. A few gardening tools were spread out neatly on a metal chair beside one of the porch posts. She adjusted her glasses and studied the space around Ronny, perhaps plotting her path around him. Her voice was hoarse, as though she had not spoken this morning. “Don’t mind me, I just need to move this plant into the sun.”

“Looks like you’re rooting that.”

“It’s an African veye-let,” she said, and the coloring of her vowels was beautiful, the elongated sounds, partly sung. The plant pot trembled in her hand. She moved with precise economy, settling the pot on the porch railing, withdrawing, leaning forward to look at it. “I love to grow them but mine never do.” She pronounced that “do” with emphasis. “Well, sometimes they do all right. But I have one now that’s dying so I’m fixing to root some more from the leaves. You must like plants like I do.”

“Yes, ma’am. My grandmother liked to raise plants, and so does my mother.”

“That’s so nice. People who take care of flowers, you know. I like people like that.”

Ronny laid the book in his lap a moment, watched a bird flutter into the yard, a robin grubbing for food. Remembering his grandmother’s vegetable garden, her turning bean pods over on her palm, cutting okra with a sharp, quick knife, her scolding when he complained about the weeding, the bean shelling, the work. “My grandmother always had a garden when I was growing up.”

“I used to have one here, back when I could keep it up. Can’t no more. Sold that part of the yard a long time ago.”

“You still keep up your roses.”

She raised her head to study them, her fingers moving absently, long narrow bones and sharp nails, a gold ring on her finger, a small watch on the wrist. “Oh, yes, I can’t let them go. They don’t do so good any more. I can’t prune them with my hands so weak.”

He resisted an urge to offer to help her with the rose bed, or with other things, though he felt the impulse. He was always trying to endear himself to people. Desperate to be liked, said Lily, his constant critic. He said, “They look plenty healthy to me.”

“They’ll do. They’ll do.” Mrs. Delacy stood there another moment, then adjusted her glasses as if trying to bring him into focus. “Well, let me get on with what I’m doing. You go on and read, now, don’t let me bother you.”

He did as she said and she went into the house again, coming out after a few minutes with another flowerpot, the same size, with another tiny leaf in it, and set it beside the first. She brought out four pots in all, one at a time, and more and more he no longer noticed her frailty but instead saw the intensity, the efficiency, with which she went about her tasks; he could almost trace her thoughts. It would not do to root only one new plant because that one might not live. She should carry something in only one hand at a time so she could manage the screen door. The directest path from one point to another was rarely a straight line due to the furniture. Small steps were safer than large ones. Hurry only caused trouble.