Our good old Cuttle is leaving us; will be gone by this time next week,
and I feel more sorry than seems quite reasonable! To-day, when we began
talking the matter over together, a suspicious huskiness in my voice
warned me that I should do well to get away from the subject before my
character for propriety was quite lost!
It is better I know for many reasons that he should leave. He cannot,
indeed will not, undertake sole charge of both flower and kitchen
garden, and to have anyone over him in either department is not to be
dreamed of. Moreover his own home is four miles away, all up and down a
long crooked lane, and a walk like that after a hard day’s work would be
enough to try anyone half his age. Under ordinary circumstances the
departure of a man who, though he has been with us now nearly three
years, came at first as a mere jobber, would be a small affair on either
side. Our poor old Cuttle is however so identified with the very
existence of this little possession of ours that to lose him seems like
losing a piece, and moreover a considerable piece of it. If the pegs and
the marking-tapes have been our contributions, all the solid work, the
earth turning and delving, the trenching, the grass-sowing, the cutting
down of trees, above all the interminable pitchfork operations, have
been his, and his satellite’s. Surely then he has a right to regard
himself as its creator? Our good, old, kindly, argumentative Cuttle! The
familiar little nooks and corners, cultivated, wild, half wild, will
hardly seem so entirely themselves; hardly so intimately familiar,
without your friendly face!