A few minutes later my mother came to me and reported:
"I don't like the looks of your George: he looks like a thief."
"Yes," I answered, "you know he has been a thief, and if you don't want him I'll try and get another place for him."
But the flowers were pulling at my mother's heart and she decided to give George a trial. And what a good time they both had that summer! It was beautiful to see the two together morning after morning, caring for those precious flowers as if they were babies. My mother had great charm, and George was devoted to her and proved an altogether satisfactory gardener. Unquestionably the two months that George spent with us were the happiest of his life. My mother at once forgot all her misgivings as to his honesty and came to regard him as her special ally; she well knew that he would do anything in his power to serve her.
One afternoon my mother informed me that she was going driving with the family that evening--she was always nervous about "leaving the house alone"--and that the maids were going to be out, too; "but George is going to stay in charge of the house, so everything will be all right and I shall not worry," she said with all confidence.
I smiled; but I had no misgiving, and sure enough we all went off, not even locking up the silver; while George, provided with newspapers and cigars, was left in charge.
On our return, some two hours later, I noticed that George was unusually serious and silent, and apparently didn't see any joke in the situation, as he had on a former occasion when I sent him for something in a closet where the family silver was in full view. He told me afterward that the time of our absence covered the longest two hours of his life, and the hardest to bear.
My home is on the edge of the town in the midst of twelve acres with many trees. "You had not more than gone," said George, "when I began to think 'what if some one should come to rob the house and I could not defend it. And they could _never know_ that I had not betrayed their trust.'"
George spent his Sundays under our trees, sometimes on guard in the orchard, which rather amused him; and I generally gave him an hour of my time, suggesting lines of work by which he could honestly earn his living, and trying my best to raise his moral standards. But he reserved his right to plan the general course of his life, or, as he would have said, to follow his own line of business. He knew that his work with us was but for the time, and he would never commit himself as to his future. This was the way he stated his position: