If you did what he told you EXACTLY like he
told it to you, then you were all right, but if you didn't--well, you
was off the place before you'd time to look round. Worked under him from
twenty to forty. Then he died an' the new one that came in had new ways.
He made a clean sweep of most of us. The men said he was jealous of Mr.
Timson."
"That was bad for you, if you had a wife and children," Miss Vanderpoel
said.
"Eight of us to feed," Kedgers answered. "A man with that on him can't
wait, miss. I had to take the first place I could get. It wasn't a good
one--poor parsonage with a big family an' not room on the place for the
vegetables they wanted. Cabbages, an' potatoes, an' beans, an' broccoli.
No time nor ground for flowers. Used to seem as if flowers got to be a
kind of dream." Kedgers gave vent to a deprecatory half laugh. "Me--I
was fond of flowers. I wouldn't have asked no better than to live among
'em. Mr. Timson gave me a book or two when his lordship sent him a
lot of new ones. I've bought a few myself--though I suppose I couldn't
afford it."
From the poor parsonage he had gone to a market gardener, and had
evidently liked the work better, hard and unceasing as it had been,
because he had been among flowers again.
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