I looked at him aghast, and began to see in my mind’s eye rough, dirty Shock, crawling about on his hands and knees, and digging out the weeds from among the onions with his fingers.
“Oh, there’s lots of things you could do!” he continued. “Why, of a night you might use your pen and help me do the booking, and read and improve yourself while I sat and smoked my pipe. Cats don’t come into the house.”
“Do you mean that I should come and live with you, sir?” I said.
“That’s it, my boy, always supposing you couldn’t do any better. Could you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, sir,” I said dismally.
“Not such a good life for a boy in winter when things are bare, as in summer when the flowers are out and the fruit comes on. Like fruit, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, but you don’t let your boys eat the fruit.”
“Tchah! I should never miss what you would eat,” he said with a laugh, “and you would soon get tired of the apples and pears and gooseberries. Think you’d like to come, eh–em? You don’t know; of course you don’t. Wouldn’t make a gentleman of you. I never heard of a gentleman gardener; plenty of gentlemen farmers, though.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, with my heart beating fast, “I’ve heard of gentlemen farmers.”
“But not of gentlemen market-gardeners, eh? No, my boy, they don’t call us gentlemen, and I never professed to be one; but a man may be a gentleman at heart whatever his business, and that’s better than being a gentleman in name.”