(as the reader's lightning wit will flash back at me) merely because the
English gardener is always a Scotch gardener. The type does exist in pure
South England blood and speech; I have spoken to the type. I was speaking
to the type only the other evening, when a rather odd little incident
occurred.

It was one of those wonderful evenings in which the sky was warm and
radiant while the earth was still comparatively cold and wet. But it is
of the essence of Spring to be unexpected; as in that heroic and hackneyed
line about coming "before the swallow dares." Spring never is Spring
unless it comes too soon. And on a day like that one might pray, without
any profanity, that Spring might come on earth as it was in heaven. The
gardener was gardening. I was not gardening. It is needless to explain
the causes of this difference; it would be to tell the tremendous history
of two souls. It is needless because there is a more immediate
explanation of the case: the gardener and I, if not equal in agreement,
were at least equal in difference. It is quite certain that he would not
have allowed me to touch the garden if I had gone down on my knees to him.
And it is by no means certain that I should have consented to touch the
garden if he had gone down on his knees to me. His activity and my
idleness, therefore, went on steadily side by side through the long sunset
hours.

And all the time I was thinking what a shame it was that he was not
sticking his spade into his own garden, instead of mine: he knew about the
earth and the underworld of seeds, the resurrection of Spring and the
flowers that appear in order like a procession marshalled by a herald.
He possessed the garden intellectually and spiritually, while I only
possessed it politically. I know more about flowers than coal-owners know
about coal; for at least I pay them honour when they are brought above the