“Such as when you fell out of the pear tree and scraped your entire face?"
"I didn't fall. I performed a tactical descent."
"You screamed louder than Mrs. Henderson's parrot."
"That was a war cry."
They engaged in dispute companionably as they worked, shoulders bumping, hands occasionally tangling as they secured the graft. It was comfortable, easy, the kind of friendship that adults would later call "sweet" while completely missing its depth.
"We should name it," Clara announced once they'd finished. "If it lives, I mean."
Gabriel studied their handiwork with the seriousness of someone who'd once spent an entire afternoon naming all the frogs in the pond, Herald, Gregory, Swamp Duke, and Mrs. Figglesworth. "What about... Secret Rose?"
“I fear I find it rather uninteresting.”
"The Rose of Destiny?"
"Too dramatic."
“Very well then, what about just... ours? Our rose?"
Clara considered this. "Our Secret Bloom," she decided. "Because it's secret and it's going to bloom and it's ours."
"That's just combining all the rejected suggestions."
"Yes, but when you combine them, they become better. Like the grafting!"
Gabriel couldn't argue with this logic, possibly because there wasn't any actual logic to argue with. This was another thing he liked about Clara, she made proclamations with such confidence that they seemed true just by force of will.
They spent the rest of the afternoon the way they always did with Clara reading aloud from whatever inappropriate book she'd stolen from her father's library, currently something about explorers being eaten by crocodiles, Gabriel interrupting with helpful commentary. “I am inclined to believe I could contend successfully with any ferocious beast, and both of them pretending they didn't have lessons to attend or responsibilities to consider.
"My tutor says I'm incorrigible," Gabriel announced proudly, lying on his back in the grass, watching clouds drift by.
"What's that mean?"
"Haven't got a clue, but he seemed very passionate about it."
"My governess says I'm willful," Clara offered, lying down beside him, maintaining a careful foot of propriety between them because even at ten, she knew there were Rules. "I believe it means I don't do what she says."
"Why would you? She's boring."
"Exactly! Yesterday she wanted me to practice sitting. Just sitting! For an hour!"
"What's to practice? You just... sit."
"Apparently there are seventeen wrong ways to do it. I've discovered them all."
Gabriel turned his head to look at her, grass tickling his cheek. "You're brilliant at sitting. Pay no mind to any differing opinion.”
"You're a terrible judge of sitting. You can't even sit through church without fidgeting."
"That's because Reverend Blackwood talks for approximately seven years every Sunday."
"He does not!"
"He does! I've timed it. Seven years, minimum."
They argued about this happily, the way they argued about everything, not with warmth, but with the contentment of engaging in a lively nature, one who would both argue and amuse, yet remain entirely inoffensive.
