Dickon had bought penny packages of flower seeds now and then and sown bright sweet-scented things among gooseberry bushes and even cabbages and he grew borders of mignonette and pinks and pansies and things whose seeds he could save year after year or whose roots would bloom each spring and spread in time into fine clumps.

The low wall was one of the prettiest things in Yorkshire because he had tucked moorland foxglove and ferns and rock-cress and hedgerow flowers into every crevice until only here and there glimpses of the stones were to be seen.
"All a chap's got to do to make 'em thrive, mother," he would say, "is to be friends with 'em for sure.

They're just like th' 'creatures.' If they're thirsty give 'em drink and if they're hungry give 'em a bit o' food.

They want to live same as we do.

If they died I should feel as if I'd been a bad lad and somehow treated them heartless." It was in these twilight hours that Mrs.Sowerby heard of all that happened at Misselthwaite Manor.