Bob dashed his fists through the whole of it, and all the draped embroidery, all the pearly filigree, all the festoons of silver, were but as a dream when a yawning man stretches his scraggy arms forth. The little tree looked wobegone, stale, and draggled with drunken tears.
“Why, Bob, I am ashamed of you”.
“And so am I of you, father”.
Before the bold speech was well out of his mouth, Bob took heartily to his heels; and, for once in his life, Mr. Garnet could not make up his mind what to do. After all, he was not so very angry, for he thought that his son had been rather clever in his mode of enforcing the moral; and a man who loves ability, and loves his boy still more, regards with a liberal shrewdness the proof of the one in the other.
Alas, it is hard to put Mr. Garnet in a clear, bold stereoscope, without breach of the third commandment. Somehow or other, as fashion goes—and happily it is on the go always—a man, and threefold thrice a woman, may, at this especial period, in the persons of his or her characters, break the sixth commandment lightly, and the seventh with great applause. Indeed, no tale is much approved without lèse–majesté of them both. Then for what subterranean reason, or by what diabolical instrumentality (that language is strictly parliamentary, because it is words and water), is a writer now debarred from reporting what his people said, unless they all talked tracts and milk, or rubrics and pommel–saddles? In a word—for sometimes any fellow must come to the point—Why do our judicious and highly–respected Sosii score out all our d—ns?
Is it not true that our generation swears almost as hard as any? And yet it will not allow a writer to hint the truth in the matter. Of course we should do it sparingly, and with due reluctance. But, unless all tales are written for women, and are so to be accepted, it is a weak attempt at imposture on our sons and grandsons to suppress entirely in our pictures any presence not indecent, however unbecoming.
Mr. Garnet was a Christian of the most advanced intelligence, so far as our ideas at the present time extend. He felt the beauty and perfection of the type which is set before us. He never sneered, as some of us do, at things which were too large for him, neither did he clip them to the shape of his own œsophagus. Only in practice, like the rest of us, he was sadly centrifugal.
Now with his nostrils widely open, and great eyes on the ground, he was pacing rapidly up and down his sheltered kitchen garden. Every square was in perfect order, every tree in its proper compass, all the edging curt and keen. The ground was cropped with that trim luxuriance which we never see except under first–rate management. All the coleworts for the winter, all the wellearthed celery, all the buttoning Brussels sprouts, salsify just fit to dig, turnips lifting whitely forth (as some ladies love to show themselves), modest savoys just hearting in and saying “no” to the dew–beads, prickly spinach daily widening the clipped arrowhead—they all had room to eat and drink, and no man grudged his neighbour; yet Puck himself could not have skipped through with dry feet during a hoar–frost. As for weeds, Bull Garnet—well, I must not say what he would have done. Suddenly a small, spare man turned the corner upon him, where a hedge of hornbeam, trimmed and dressed as if with a pocket–comb, broke the south–western violence. Most men would have shown their hats above the narrow spine, but Rufus Hutton was very short, and seldom carried a chimney–pot.
“Sir, what can I do for you”? said Mr. Garnet, much surprised, but never taken aback.