And yet in that short walk between the green turf and the yellow
sands he was destined to find, his hard-headedness provoked
into a not unfamiliar phase which the world was inclined to call
hot-headedness. The fact was that the Cornish peasantry,
who composed his tenantry and domestic establishment,
were far from being people with no nonsense about them.
There was, alas! a great deal of nonsense about them;
with ghosts, witches, and traditions as old as Merlin,
they seemed to surround him with a fairy ring of nonsense.
But the magic circle had one center: there was one point in
which the curving conversation of the rustics always returned.
It was a point that always pricked the Squire to exasperation,
and even in this short walk he seemed to strike it everywhere.
He paused before descending the steps from the lawn to speak
to the gardener about potting some foreign shrubs, and the gardener
seemed to be gloomily gratified, in every line of his leathery
brown visage, at the chance of indicating that he had formed
a low opinion of foreign shrubs.

"We wish you'd get rid of what you've got here, sir," he observed,
digging doggedly. "Nothing'll grow right with them here."

"Shrubs!" said the Squire, laughing. "You don't call the peacock
trees shrubs, do you? Fine tall trees--you ought to be proud of them."

"Ill weeds grow apace," observed the gardener. "Weeds can
grow as houses when somebody plants them." Then he added:
"Him that sowed tares in the Bible, Squire."