Page 50 of Rough Around the Hedges

I had no choice. I was going to have to plant these seeds with these kids. Was this even legal? Didn’t you need police checks to work or volunteer with children?

Sigh.

I sat down between the kids she called Daisy and Danny and stared at the spread in front of us. It was all flowers, and each kid seemed to have been assigned a specific flower.

All right.

I could do this.

It was just planting seeds with a bunch of five-year-olds. How hard could it be?

“No, mister,” Daisy said, leaning over. “You hafta poke a hole, like this.” She stuck her pointer finger in the middle of my little pot until her knuckle was buried in the soil. “Then you put seeds in.” She then proceeded to steal my sunflower seed and drop it into that same hole before covering it up. “Ta-dah!”

“Oh, thank you,” I said, taking the sunflower marker Danny handed me and putting it in the pot before I was told off about that, too.

“Mister,” the other little girl with a ponytail said. “What’s a shitty slicker?”

I blinked at her. “A shi—city slicker?”

“Miss Rose called you it.”

Ah. What she’d said just now. “It’s a… slightly mean way to refer to someone who lives in a big city.”

The little girl tilted her head to the side. “Don’t you live here?”

“I just moved here from London.”

Daisy gasped. “That’s where the King lives! And the pwincesses!”

“It is.”

“Mister, do you know him? The King?”

Ah. “Uh… I do know him, yes.”

Danny narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t beweive you,” he said, leaning in closely. “How do you know him? I wanted toask him to make chocowate buttons free, but my daddy said you can’t just meet the King because he’s vewy busy and vewy important.”

“That’s true, most people can’t,” I said, planting another sunflower seed. “But some people can, and I’m one of them.”

The ponytail girl stared at me. “Is dat ’cause you’re a duke? Das what Miss Rose called you a mimmit ago.”

“It is. I’m the Duke of Hanbury.”

“Nuh-uh,” Danny said. “He’s old. As old as my grandpa! I’ve seent him!”

“That’s the previous duke. He’s actually my grandpa, and he’s in heaven now,” I explained.

“Is he an angel?” Daisy asked.

Debatable.

Not that I would drag these poor, innocent kids into that.

“He is. My daddy is, too, so that’s why I’m the duke now.”

“Oh, no. Are you sad, mister?” She gripped my arm, looking at me with earnest eyes. “Do you need a hug? Mummy says you should gib hugs to sad people.”

“I’m okay, but that’s very sweet of you to offer, Daisy,” I replied, softly patting her head.

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