“I’ll fetch a turn about the garden.”
Cymbeline.
One year Chaunters asked me to excuse him for half an hour or more, while he took a funeral: the garden was his special delight, and though in October there was little to see, I should find the gardener there, and he would show me what was left. The flowers needed no apology: there was a blaze of dahlias, and I know not what else: and there was Robert Diggle, the gardener, whose acquaintance I had made before.
He was digging away exactly as I had seen him in the previous October; and I thought of the historic Andrew Fairservice:
“Am trenching up the sparry-grass, and am gaun to saw sum Misegun beans.”
Do you trench up asparagus in October? and what are Misegun beans? I did not ask Robert, because it would have revealed the depth of my ignorance, and the school might have got to know it. How could I examine in botany, or in the principles of agriculture, if I didn’t know when to trench up sparry-grass? It seemed wiser to congratulate the good man on the appearance of the garden, and on the bright show of flowers, which I did not venture to specify more particularly: I added it was evident that the rector was as keen a gardener as ever.
The remark was not well received: it implied that Robert was not entitled to the undivided glory of the dahlias and things. He grunted, and then conceded that the rector worked hard. “It’s a pastime,” he said, and then handsomely added, “and I think he does good: why, theer’s a manny little thengs, as it doon’t matter how you put ’em in.” Poor rector!
“Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted (gardener’s) trade.”
Robert’s thoughts were elsewhere, while I filled and lighted a pipe. “Ah heerd yo’ was about, sir: been to our skule, ’aven’t yo’?”
I admitted it.
“’Twas our Lizzie tould me theer were a streenge mon as ’ad been, and hoo[32] weren’t a-goin’ to skule anny moor. ‘Whoy, whativer’s to do?’ ah says: and hoo says, the mon come and called hoo Jenny, and hoo towld ’im hoo weren’t called Jenny: that were Jenny Miller in yon desk; and the mon asted hoo to come ’ome with ’im wheer ’ee lived, and hoo were froightened. ‘Lor’ bless thee, wench,’ ah says, ‘yon were th’ inspector: ’ee wouldna hurt yo’.’ ‘Na, na, dadda,’ hoo says, ‘ah bain’t a-gooin to skule anny moor.’” And Robert leant on his spade and roared. Then he added, apologetically, “Hoo isn’t only fower, a-gooin’ foive.”