Brownsmith's Boy Part 10

I sighed, and said:

"I'm afraid I shall be a great deal of trouble to them, sir, and an enormous expense."

"Oh, you think so, do you!" he said, stooping down and lifting up first one cat and then another, stroking them gently the while. Then one of them, as usual, leaped upon his back. "Well, look here, my boy," he said thoughtfully, "that's all nonsense about expense! I--"

He stopped short and went on stroking one cat's back, as it rubbed against his leg, and he seemed to be thinking very deeply.

"Yes, all nonsense. See here; wait for a week or two, perhaps one of your uncles may find you something to do, or send you to a good school, eh?"

"No, sir," I said; "my uncle Frederick said I must not expect to be sent to a school."

"Oh he did, did he?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, if nothing better turns up--if they don't find you a good place, you might come and help me."

"Help you, sir!" I said wonderingly; "what, learn to be a market-gardener?"

"Yes, there's nothing so very dreadful in that, is there?"

"Oh no, sir! but what could I do?"

"Heaps of things. Tally the bunches and check the sieves, learn to bud and graft, and how to cut young trees, and--oh, I could find you enough to do."

I looked at him aghast, and began to see in my mind's eye rough, dirty Shock, crawling about on his hands and knees, and digging out the weeds from among the onions with his fingers.

"Oh, there's lots of things you could do!" he continued. "Why, of a night you might use your pen and help me do the booking, and read and improve yourself while I sat and smoked my pipe. Cats don't come into the house."

"Do you mean that I should come and live with you, sir?" I said.

"That's it, my boy, always supposing you couldn't do any better. Could you?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so, sir," I said dismally.

"Not such a good life for a boy in winter when things are bare, as in summer when the flowers are out and the fruit comes on. Like fruit, don't you?"

"Yes, sir, but you don't let your boys eat the fruit."

"Tchah! I should never miss what you would eat," he said with a laugh, "and you would soon get tired of the apples and pears and gooseberries.

Think you'd like to come, eh-em? You don't know; of course you don't.

Wouldn't make a gentleman of you. I never heard of a gentleman gardener; plenty of gentlemen farmers, though."

"Yes, sir," I said, with my heart beating fast, "I've heard of gentlemen farmers."

"But not of gentlemen market-gardeners, eh? No, my boy, they don't call us gentlemen, and I never professed to be one; but a man may be a gentleman at heart whatever his business, and that's better than being a gentleman in name."

I looked up in his fresh red face, and there was such a kindly look in it that I felt happier than I had been for weeks, and I don't know what moved me to do it, but I laid my hand upon his arm.

He looked down at me thoughtfully as he went on.

"People are rather strange about these things. Gentleman farmer cultivates a hundred acres of land that he pays a hundred and fifty pounds a year for say: market-gardener cultivates twenty acres that he pays two or three hundred for; and they call the one a gentleman, the other a gardener. But it don't matter, Master Dennison, a bit. Does it?"

"No, sir," I said, "I don't think so."

"Old business, gardening," he went on, with a dry look at me--"very old.

Let me see. There was a man named Adam took to it first, wasn't there?

Cultivated a garden, didn't he?"

I nodded and smiled.

"Ah, yes," he said; "but that was a long time ago, and you've not been brought up for such a business. You wouldn't like it."

"Indeed, but I should, sir," I cried enthusiastically.

"No, no," he said, deliberately. "Don't be in a hurry to choose, my boy. I knew a lad once who said he would like to be a sailor, and he went to sea and had such a taste of it from London to Plymouth that he would not go any farther, and they had to set him ash.o.r.e."

"He must have been a great coward," I said.

"To be sure he was; but then you might be if you p.r.i.c.ked your finger with the thorns of a rose, or had to do something in the garden when it was freezing hard, eh?"

"I don't think I should be," I replied.

"But you must think," he said. "It's very nice to see flowers blooming and fruit fit to pick with the sun s.h.i.+ning and the sky blue; but life is not all summer, my boy, is it? There are wet days and storms, and rough times, and the flowers you see blossoming have been got ready in the cold wintry weather, when they were only seeds, or bare shabby-looking roots."

"Yes, I know that," I said.

"And you think you would like to come?"

"Yes, sir."

"What for? to play in the garden, and look on while the work is done?"

"I think I should be ashamed to do that," I said; "it would be so lazy.

If you please, Mr Brownsmith, I've got to work and do something, and if you will have me, I should like to come."

"Well, well," he said, "mine's a good business and profitable and healthy, and there are times when, in spite of bad crops, bad weather, and market losses, I thank G.o.d that I took to such a pleasant and instructive way of getting a living."

"It is instructive then, sir?" I said.

"Instructive, my lad!" he cried with energy. "I don't know any business that is more full of teaching. I've been at it all my life, and the older I grow the more I find there is to learn."

"I like that," I said, for it opened out a vista of adventure to me that seemed full of bright flowers and suns.h.i.+ne.

"A man who has brains may go on learning and making discoveries, not discoveries of countries and wonders, but of little things that may make matters better for the people who are to come after him. Then he may turn a bit of the England where he works into a tropical country, by covering it over with gla.s.s, and having a stove; then some day, if he goes on trying, he may find himself able to write FRHS at the end of his name."

"And did you, sir?"