“I should like to know you.”
“With pleasure, if you can.”
“What are you by profession?”
“A hard question. I profess nothing. By conviction I am an ill-used man, and for the moment I am a seller of flowers.”
He showed me his flowers—kingcups, cuckoo flowers, primroses from the moist woods.
“I will buy your flowers,” I said.
“No! I think I shall keep those,” and he put them in a horse trough close by. I asked him if he would return into the country with me.
“No,” he replied, “it would be sunrise before we got into the country, and I never spend the daytime in the country if I can avoid it.”
“Why?” I asked.