>>6108015As you ponder what to do, you notice two small figures approaching from the east. Their tall caps give them away at once as fellow gnomes. Your stomach sinks. You are in no position to entertain guests, what with the state of the shack and the squatter living in it, but neither can you turn them away without the greatest breach of propriety.
Your raise your cap in greeting as they draw near, hoping against hope that they will simply return the gesture and pass you by. No such luck. Even worse, one of the gnomes is beardless, that is to say, a gname, a female. By the long beard and heavy brow of the other, you'd guess she is his daughter or ward. You quickly climb down the hill to meet them.
"They said one of ours had come to take the place, but I didn't believe it," the bearded gnome says, briefly popping the long pipe from his mouth, his eyes sharp as flint as he surveys your little plot. "Neddle Hawthorne," he says, raising his cap ever so slightly. "Groundskeeper and gardener of the hortus, the hortus conclusus, and so forth, of Lord Cornelius Reginald the Third." He jabs his pipe toward his daughter. "Poppy Hawthorne, my daughter." The daughter is far less patronizing than her father, taking off her cap entirely and bowing so low that her two long pigtails fall over her shoulders and hang like pretty ropes in the air.
"Basil Oakley," you stutter out. "But everyone I know calls me Bud."
"Oakley!" says Neddle. "I knew an Oakley. Good-for-nothing layabouts, the lot of them. Too much time spent gadding about on the soil instead of tending it." He leers at you, inviting you challenge him.
>Don't take the bait. You're an orphan, after all, and never knew your kin. There's just your uncle, but he's a Rosewood.>Admit that Oakley's do have a reputation for gnoming, but that you're here to settle down for more agricultural pursuits>Retort that for your part, you've never even heard of Hawthornes. That should put him in his place. >Write-in 