No sooner were these words uttered, than the gardener emptied the remains of his watering-pot coolly in Forester’s face, and, first paying him his wages, dismissed him from his service.
Miss M’Evoy, who was at work, seated at the door, made room most joyfully for Forester to pass, and observed, that she had long since prophesied he would not do for them.
Forester was now convinced, that it was impossible to reform a positive old gardener, to make him try new experiments upon cherry-trees, or to interest him for the progress of science. He deplored the perversity of human nature, and he began, when he reflected upon the characters of Miss M’Evoy and her brother, to believe, that they were beings distinct from the rest of their species; he was, at all events, glad to have parted with such odious companions. On his road to Edinburgh he had time for various reflections.
“Thirty shillings, then, with hard bodily labour, I have earned for one month’s service!” said Forester to himself. “Well, I will keep to my resolution. I will live upon the money I earn, and upon that alone; I will not have recourse to my bank notes till the last extremity.” He took out his pocket-book, however, and looked at them, to see that they were safe. “How wretched,” thought he, “must be that being, who is obliged to purchase, in his utmost need, the assistance of his fellow-creatures with such vile trash as this! I have been unfortunate in my first experiment; but all men are not like this selfish gardener and his brutal son, incapable of disinterested friendship.”
Here Forester was interrupted in his meditations by a young man, who accosted him with—“Sir, if I don’t mistake, I believe I have a key of yours.”
Forester looked up at the young man’s face, and recollected him to be the person who had nearly lost his life in descending for his key into the brewing-vat.
“I knew you again, sir,” continued the brewer’s clerk, “by your twirling those scissors upon your finger, just as you were doing that day at the brewery.”
Forester was not conscious, till this moment, that he had a pair of scissors in his hand: whilst the gardener was paying him his wages, to relieve his mauvaise honte, our hero took up Miss M’Evoy’s scissors, which lay upon the table, and twirled them upon his fingers, as he used to do with a key. He was rather ashamed to perceive, that he had not yet cured himself of such a silly habit. “I thought the lesson I got at the brewery,” said he, “would have cured me for ever of this foolish trick; but the diminutive chains of habit{8}, as somebody says, are scarcely ever heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.”
{Footnote 8: Dr. Johnson’s Vision of Theodore.}
“Sir!” said the astonished clerk.