“They won't let me stay here!”
Fry took him into the center of the garden, and put a spade into his hand. “Now you dig this piece,” said he in his dry, unfriendly tone, “and if you have time cut the edges of this grass path square.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth before Robinson drove the spade into the soil with all the energy of one of God's creatures escaping from system back to nature.
Fry left him in the garden after making him pull down his vizor, for there was one more prisoner working at some distance.
Robinson set to with energy, and dug for the bare life. It was a sort of work he knew very little about, and a gardener would have been disgusted at his ridges, but he threw his whole soul into it and very soon had nearly completed his task. Having been confined so long without exercise his breath was short, and he perspired profusely; but he did not care for that. “Oh, how sweet this is after being buried alive,” cried he, and in went the spade again. Presently he was seized with a strong desire to try the other part of his task, the more so as it required more skill and presented a difficulty to overcome. A part of the path had been shaved and the knippers lay where they had been last used. Robinson inspected the recent work with an intelligent eye, and soon discovered traces of a white line on one side of the path, that served as a guide to the knippers. “Oh! I must draw a straight line,” said Robinson out loud, indulging himself with the sound of a human voice. “But how? can you tell me that,” he inquired of a gooseberry bush that grew near. The words were hardly out of his mouth before, peering about in every direction, he discovered an iron spike with some cord wrapped round it and, not far off, a piece of chalk. He pounced on them, and fastening the spike at the edge of the path attempted to draw a line with the chalk, using the string as a ruler. Not succeeding, he reflected a little, and the result was that he chalked several feet of the line all round until it was all white; then with the help of a stake, which he took for his other terminus, he got the chalked string into a straight line just above the edge of the grass. Next pressing it tightly down with his foot, he effected a white line on the grass. He now removed the string, took the knippers, and following his white line, trimmed the path secundum artem. “There,” said Robinson, to the gooseberry-bush, but not very loud for fear of being heard and punished, “I wonder whether that is how the gardeners do it. I think it must be.” He viewed his work with satisfaction, then went back to his digging, and as he put the finishing stroke Fry came to bring him back to his cell. It was bedtime.
“I never worked in a garden before,” began Robinson, “so it is not so well done as it might be, but if I was to come every day for a week, I think I could master it. I did not know there was a garden in this prison. If ever I build a prison there shall be a garden in it as big as Belgrave Square.”
“You are precious fond of the sound of your own voice, No. 19,” said Fry dryly.
“We are not forbidden to speak to the warders, are we?”
“Not at proper times.”
He threw open cell-door 19, and Robinson entered.
Before he could close the door Robinson said, “Good-night and thank you.”