“A what?”
“A gardener.”
“My dear boy!” she cried in horror, “whatever put that in your head? Why, you couldn’t be anything worse. There!—I do declare you startled me so I’ve stuck the needle right into my finger, and it bleeds!”
We had many arguments about the matter while I was waiting for answers to my letters, for no one came down to see me.
Uncle Thomas said he was going to see about my being put in a good public school, but there was no hurry; and perhaps it would be better to wait and see what Uncle Johnson meant to do, for he should not like to offend him, as he was much better off, and it might be doing me harm.
Uncle Johnson wrote a very short letter, saying that I had better write to my Uncle Frederick.
Second-cousin Willis did not reply for a week, and he said it was the duty of one of my uncles to provide for me; and he should make a point of bringing them both to book if they did not see about something for me before long.
One or two other relatives wrote to me that they were not in circumstances to help me, and that if they were strong, stout boys such as I was, they would try and get a situation, for it was no disgrace to earn my living; and they wished me well.
I took all these letters over to Mr Brownsmith, and he read them day after day as they came; but he did not say a word, and it made my heart sink, as it seemed to me that he was repenting of his offer.
And so a month slipped by; and when I was not reading or writing I found myself gazing out of the window at the pleasant old garden, where the fruit was being gathered day after day. The time was passing, and the chances of my going over to Brownsmith’s seemed to me growing remote, while I never seemed to have seen so much of Shock.