She ordered Dick up to work in the depressed-looking area
before the house, which she called her flower garden, a task which Dick
seemed perfectly willing to perform, by the way--although his assistance
would have been more than welcome at other work than tying scraggly rose
bushes and protecting them from the winter already at hand.
As to Buddy, he surely would have resented, more keenly than the women,
the implication that he needed any one to take care of him. Buddy's
allegiance to Ford was wavering, at that time. Dick had gone to some
trouble to alter an old pair of chaps so that Buddy could wear them, and
his star was in the ascendant; a pair of chaps with fringes were, in
Buddy's estimation, a surer pledge of friendship and favor than the
privilege of feeding a lame horse.
Buddy was rather terrible, sometimes. He had a way of standing back
unnoticed, and of listening when he was believed to be engrossed in his
play. Afterward he was apt to say the things which should not be said;
in other words, he was the average child of seven, living without
playmates, and so forced by his environment to interest himself in the
endless drama played by the grown-ups around him.
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