“Accordingly he came the next morning, and set his gardener at work, telling him what to do. Then he went away, and the two men went on working, one upon one side of the garden, and the other on the other.
“At length, after they had been working about an hour, the woman came out and began to scold them because they did not work faster. When she came to the gentleman’s gardener, he stopped, and listened to her a few minutes, leaning on his hoe, and then he said,—
“‘I will thank you, ma’am, to go and scold your own man. I am responsible to my master.’”
“Is that all the story, Miss Anne?” said Lucy, when she found that Miss Anne paused.
“Yes,” said Miss Anne, “that is all.”
“I don’t see how that explains the difficulty, exactly,” said Royal.
“Why, it is to show that, though the gardener was performing a duty which was for the advantage of the woman, yet he was not responsible to her for the performance of it. He was under obligation, but not under obligation to her. So it often happens that persons are under obligation to do things, and yet they are not under any obligations to us. And in such cases, we have no right to insist upon their doing them, nor to command them to do them. You were under obligation to help the man out of his difficulty with the cart, but you were not under obligation to him.”
“Who is it, then, that I am under obligation to, in such a case?” asked Royal.
“Why, to conscience,—or to God. But you are not responsible to the man at all. Of course, if he wishes you to do it, he ought only to request it. He must not command. But his boy is under obligation to him. The obligation is, perhaps, no greater in itself, but it runs to the man himself, and the man has a right to exact the fulfilment of it. But your obligation is not to him at all; and he has no right to insist upon your fulfilling it, or to call you to account for it at all.”
Royal listened very attentively to this explanation, though Lucy did not understand it very well. However, Lucy understood better what followed.