"Never."
"I met him some time ago in the country, quite by chance," Mrs. Verulam said airily.
"Really?"
"Yes. We fraternised."
"Oh!"
"I found him a most interesting, intelligent man; full of enthusiasm."
"Enthusiasm! How very odd!" Mr. Rodney said, as if to be full of enthusiasm were to be full of some extraordinary disease.
"For his work."
"He is a workman?"
"He is a gardener—that is to say, he has a garden and a small farm, as he tells me. And he attends to them himself, with the help of an elderly labourer, Jacob Minnidick."