The best Gardener
Wilhelmine was wiping her monocle and singing a nursery rhyme, while a tan young boy was unloading boxes with dark flowers. It was the song her friends used to love and the song her strict governess had been hating her for.
“Is that all, Billy-Master?” with these words, the Gardener stared at his regular customer. Everyone knew Bill Gordon, a man of the Castle of the Night who had arrived ten years ago. A rumor had been spread, that the gardens decorated by Bill, had some dark secrets hidden in them.
“Thank you, fella” Wilhelmine answered with a hoarse voice.
But her thoughts were far far away from this place, in the time when a little girl had been scolded for her torn dress and pantyhose because “girls don’t do such things”.
Girls never dig in the dirt, pick up wounded birds, tear their tights and, of course, girls neither hide shovels in their rooms nor are interested in fertilizers.
That’s why Wilhelmine had left as soon as she grew up. She had made up her mind not to be a girl anymore. No one could possibly understand that Billie had once been a young lady. Though Bill Gordon never had a wife or children, no one in the town could call him a lonely man. How could one be lonely, having this many flowers to care about?