is about.
He did not speak to her as if they had never seen each other before but
as if he knew her quite well. Mary knew nothing about boys and she
spoke to him a little stiffly because she felt rather shy.
Did you get Martha s letter? she asked.
He nodded his curly, rust-colored head.
That s why I come.
He stooped to pick up something which had been lying on the ground
beside him when he piped.
I ve got th garden tools. There s a little spade an rake an a fork
an hoe. Eh! they are good uns. There s a trowel, too. An th woman
in th shop threw in a packet o white poppy an one o blue larkspur
when I bought th other seeds.
Will you show the seeds to me? Mary said.
She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy.
It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would
not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes
and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer
to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and
grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She
liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red
cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.
Let us sit down on this log and look at them, she said.
They sat down and he took a clumsy little brown paper package out of
his coat pocket. He untied the string and inside there were ever so
many neater and smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each
one.
There s a lot o mignonette an poppies, he said. Mignonette s th
sweetest smellin thing as grows, an it ll grow wherever you cast it,
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