of a crop with a hoe. We had tied them up with bast only a week or
so before, and now half were rotten and half had shot up into tall
slender growths. He had the hoe in both hands and slogged. Great
wipes he made, and at each stroke he said, "Take that!"

The air was thick with flying fragments of abortive salad. It was a
fantastic massacre. It was the French Revolution of that cold
tyranny, the vindictive overthrow of the pampered vegetable
aristocrats. After he had assuaged his passion upon them, he turned
for other prey; he kicked holes in two of our noblest marrows,
flicked off the heads of half a row of artichokes, and shied the hoe
with a splendid smash into the cucumber frame. Something of the awe
of that moment returns to me as I write of it.

"Well, my boy," he said, approaching with an expression of beneficent
happiness, "I've done with gardening. Let's go for a walk like
reasonable beings. I've had enough of this"--his face was convulsed
for an instant with bitter resentment--"Pandering to cabbages."


4

That afternoon's walk sticks in my memory for many reasons. One is
that we went further than I had ever been before; far beyond Keston
and nearly to Seven-oaks, coming back by train from Dunton Green,
and the other is that my father as he went along talked about
himself, not so much to me as to himself, and about life and what he
had done with it. He monologued so that at times he produced an
effect of weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at
that time not understanding many things that afterwards became plain