"Is that you, Herbert?" I said in surprise.
It was.
Strange how machinery can influence a man. The last time I had seen
Herbert he was a rubicund cheerful gardener. He was now a London
taxi-driver, with all the signs of that mystery on him: the
shabbiness, the weariness, the disdain.
"Are you glad you gave up gardening?" I asked him.
"Can't say I am now," he replied. "There's more money in this, but the
work's too hard. I miss my sleep, too."
"You can always go back," I said.
"I wonder," he replied. "I'd like to. This being at every one's beck
and call who happens to have a shilling is what I'm tired of."
"What about tips?" I asked.
"I get plenty of them," he said. "In fact, if the clock registers
tenpence or one and fourpence or one and tenpence I practically always
get the odd twopence. That's all right. It's the people who don't want
to tip but daren't not do it that I can't stand. And there are such
lots of them. That's what makes taxi-drivers look so contemptuous
like--the tips. People think we want the tips; but there's a time when
we'd rather go without them than get them like that."