I looked up in his fresh red face, and there was such a kindly look in it that I felt happier than I had been for weeks, and I don’t know what moved me to do it, but I laid my hand upon his arm.
He looked down at me thoughtfully as he went on.
“People are rather strange about these things. Gentleman farmer cultivates a hundred acres of land that he pays a hundred and fifty pounds a year for say: market-gardener cultivates twenty acres that he pays two or three hundred for; and they call the one a gentleman, the other a gardener. But it don’t matter, Master Dennison, a bit. Does it?”
“No, sir,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Old business, gardening,” he went on, with a dry look at me—“very old. Let me see. There was a man named Adam took to it first, wasn’t there? Cultivated a garden, didn’t he?”
I nodded and smiled.
“Ah, yes,” he said; “but that was a long time ago, and you’ve not been brought up for such a business. You wouldn’t like it.”
“Indeed, but I should, sir,” I cried enthusiastically.
“No, no,” he said, deliberately. “Don’t be in a hurry to choose, my boy. I knew a lad once who said he would like to be a sailor, and he went to sea and had such a taste of it from London to Plymouth that he would not go any farther, and they had to set him ashore.”
“He must have been a great coward,” I said.