"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?"