She's a very nice woman.

A very good woman.

I've known her thirty years." "Have you had any children, sir ?" I said.
"No," he replied, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye; "and yet I've always been looking after nurseries--all my life." In about an hour he finished his morning work in the vinery, and I went out with him in the garden, where he left me to tidy up a great bed of geraniums with a basket and a pair of scissors.
"I've got to see to the men now," he said.

"By-and-by we'll go and have a turn at the cucumbers." The bed I was employed upon was right away from the house in a sort of nook where the lawn ran up amongst some great Portugal laurels.

It was a mass of green and scarlet, surrounded by shortly cropped grass, and I was very busy in the hot sunshine, enjoying my task, and now and then watching the thrushes that kept hopping out on to the lawn and then back under the shelter of the evergreens, when I suddenly saw a shadow, and, turning sharply, found that my friend of the peach-house had come softly up over the grass with another lad very much like him, but a little taller, and probably a couple of years older.
"Hullo, pauper!" said the first.
I felt my cheeks tingle, and my tongue wanted to say something very sharp, but I kept my teeth closed for a moment and then said: "Good morning, sir!" He took no notice of this, but turned to his brother and whispered something, when they both laughed together; and as I bent down over my work I felt as if I must have looked very much like one of the scarlet geraniums whose dead blossom stems I was taking out.
Of course, a boy with a well-balanced brain and plenty of sound, honest, English stuff in him ought to be able to treat with contempt the jeering and laughter of those who are teasing him; but somehow I'm afraid that there are very few boys who can bear being laughed at with equanimity.
I know, to be frank, I could not, for as those two lads stared at me and then looked at each other and whispered, and then laughed heartily-- well, no; not heartily, but in a forced way, I felt my face burn and my fingers tingle.