"May I go out in it?"

"Certainly, my boy. Yes," said the doctor, without looking up, though
there was the quick sound of footsteps, and, with a bound, Dexter was
through the open French window, and out upon the lawn.

The doctor did not heed the lapse of time, for he was intent upon his
writing, and an hour had passed when the door opened and Helen returned.

"Now I am at liberty, papa," she said; "and--where is Dexter?"

"Eh? The boy? Bless me, I thought he was here!"

_Smash! Tinkle_!

The sound of breaking glass, and the doctor leaped to his feet, just as
a loud gruff voice sounded--

"Here, you just come down."

"Copestake!" cried the doctor. "Why, what is the matter out there!"

CHAPTER EIGHT.

OLD DAN'L IS WROTH.

Mr Grayson's was the best garden for twenty miles round.

The Coleby people said so, and they ought to have known.

But Dan'l Copestake said it was all nonsense. "Might be made a good
garden if master wasn't so close," he used to say to everybody. "Wants
more money spent on it, and more hands kept. How'm I to keep a place
like that to rights with only two--me and a lab'rer, under me, and Peter
to do the sweeping?"

Keep it to rights or not, it was to Helen Grayson four acres of delight,
and she was to blame for a great deal which offended Dan'l Copestake,
the head-gardener.

"Papa," it would be, "did you give orders for that beautiful privet
hedge to be cut down!"

"Eh? no, my dear, Copestake said it kept the light off some of those
young trees, and I said he might cut it down."

"Oh, do stop him," cried Helen. "It will take years to grow up, and
this past year it has been delightful, with its sweet-scented blossom
and beautiful black berries."

So it was with scores of things. Helen wanted to see them growing
luxuriantly, Dan'l Copestake loved to hash and chop them into miserably
cramped "specimints," as he called them, and the doctor got all the
blame.

But what a garden! It was full of old-fashioned flowers in great
clumps, many of them growing, to Dan'l's disgust, down among the fruit
and vegetables.

There were flowering shrubs and beautiful conifers, a great
mulberry-tree on the mossy lawn, and a huge red brick wall all round,
literally covered with trained trees, which in their seasons were masses
of white bloom, or glowing with purple and golden plums, and light red,
black, or yellowy pink cherries, and great fat pears, while, facing the
south, there we