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The Dream Chapter the Second - The Beginning of the Dream Parts 5 and 6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section four of The Dream, a Novel. This is liver
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Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit liver rox
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Speaker 1: dot org. Recorded by asen Ah mc mehedy in sixth
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Speaker 1: of July twenty twenty three. The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: Section four, Chapter the second the beginning of the Dream,
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Speaker 1: Part five. I think I mentioned the line of hills,
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Speaker 1: the downs that bounded the world of my upbringing to
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Speaker 1: the north. What lay beyond them was a matter for
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Speaker 1: wonder and speculation to me, long before I was able
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Speaker 1: to clamber to their crests. In summer time, the sun
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Speaker 1: set behind them to the northwest, often in a glow
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Speaker 1: of gold and splendor, And I remembered that among my
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Speaker 1: fences was I believe that the day of judgment was
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Speaker 1: over there, and the celestial city to which mister Snapes
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Speaker 1: would some day lead us in procession, of course, with
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Speaker 1: a banner. My first ascent of this childhood's boundary must
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Speaker 1: have occurred when I was eight or nine. I do
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Speaker 1: not remember with whom I went, or any other particulars,
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Speaker 1: but I have a very acute memory of my disappointment
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Speaker 1: at looking down a long, very gentle slope and seeing
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Speaker 1: nothing but fields and hedges and groups of large sheep feeding.
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Speaker 1: What I had expected to find I cannot now remember.
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Speaker 1: I seemed to have noted only the foreground then, And
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Speaker 1: it must have been after many such excursions that I
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Speaker 1: began to realize the veriegated speciousness of the country to
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Speaker 1: the north. The view indeed went very far. On a
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Speaker 1: clear day, we saw blue hills nearly twenty miles away.
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Speaker 1: There were woodlands and parklands, brown ridges of plowland that
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Speaker 1: became golden ridges of corn in summer time. Village churches
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Speaker 1: amided clustering greenery and the gleaming of ponds and lakes. Southward,
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Speaker 1: the horizon lifted as the downs were ascended, and the
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Speaker 1: breath of the sea belt increased. It was my father
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Speaker 1: who drew my attention to that on the first occasion
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Speaker 1: of our crossing the downs together go as I, as
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Speaker 1: you like airy, he said, and the sea goes up
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Speaker 1: as I. There it is, you see level with us,
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Speaker 1: And we ever saw I above cherry gardens. And yet
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Speaker 1: it turn't drowned cherry gardens. And why don't it drown
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Speaker 1: Cherry Gardens, seeing that it might tell me that Erey,
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Speaker 1: I couldn't. Providence, said my father triumphantly. Providence does it
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Speaker 1: Old's bag the sea thus far and over there? See
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Speaker 1: how plain it is is France. I saw Franz, and
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Speaker 1: it was exceptionally plain. Sometimes you see Franz and sometimes
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Speaker 1: you don't, said my father. There is a lesson in that, too,
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Speaker 1: my boy, for those who care to take it. It
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Speaker 1: had always been the custom of my father to go
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Speaker 1: out after tea on Sundays, summer and winter alike, and
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Speaker 1: walk right over the downs to Chessinghager, six miles and
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Speaker 1: more away. He went, and knew to see my uncle John,
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Speaker 1: Uncle John Gulip, my mother's brother, who was gardener to
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Speaker 1: Lord Bramble of Chessinghanger Park. But it was only when
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Speaker 1: he began to take me with him that I realized
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Speaker 1: that these were had any other motive than fraternal in
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Speaker 1: low affection and the natural desire of a pent up
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Speaker 1: shopkeeper for exercise. But from the first journey on I
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Speaker 1: knew that the clue to these expeditions lay in the
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Speaker 1: gardens with which we had returned to Cherry Gardens. Always
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Speaker 1: there was supper in the cozy little gardener's cottage. And
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Speaker 1: always as we departed we picked up an unopprossive load
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Speaker 1: of flowers, fruit or vegetables, cilery, peas, auber jeans, mushrooms
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Speaker 1: or what not, and returned through the dusk or moonlight
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Speaker 1: or darkness, or result as a season, and the weather
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Speaker 1: might determine, to the little shop. And sometimes my father
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Speaker 1: would be silent or whistle softly, and sometimes he would
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Speaker 1: improve our journey with a discourse on the wonders of nature,
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Speaker 1: the beauty of goldness, and the beneficence of propudence. To
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Speaker 1: he talked of the moon one moonlight night. Look at
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Speaker 1: it airy, he said, A dead world like a skull.
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Speaker 1: It is up there, stripped of its soul, which is
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Speaker 1: its flesh, so to speak, and all its trees, which,
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Speaker 1: if you take me, were its air, and its whiskers
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Speaker 1: shipped and dead forever and ever dry as a bone.
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Speaker 1: And every one who lived there gone too, dashed and
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Speaker 1: ashes and gone. Why are they gone farther? I would ask,
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Speaker 1: gone to their judgment? You would explain with a gusto.
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Speaker 1: Kings and green grocers, all lot of them tried and
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Speaker 1: made sheep and goats off, and gone to their bless
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Speaker 1: or their sufferings airy according to their iniquities, weighed and
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Speaker 1: found wanting long pause. It's a pity, he said. What
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Speaker 1: is fervor? Pity is over. It would be something to
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Speaker 1: look at them running about up there, friendly like it
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Speaker 1: would be. But that's questioning the ways of Providence. That is,
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Speaker 1: I suppose we'd be always staring up and falling over things.
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Speaker 1: You never see a thing in this world airry that
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Speaker 1: you think isn't right. But what when you come to
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Speaker 1: think it out, it isn't wiser than you knew. Providence
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Speaker 1: as deep as he is I and you can't get
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Speaker 1: behind them, and don't go banging them peers against your side.
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Speaker 1: My boy, them willams and they won't like it. About
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Speaker 1: the curious habits of animals and the ways and migrations
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Speaker 1: of birds. My father would also talk very freely. Me
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Speaker 1: and you aery. We walk by the light of reason.
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Speaker 1: We have reasonable minds given us to do it to it.
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Speaker 1: But animals and birds and worms and things, they live
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Speaker 1: by instinct. They just feel they have to do this
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Speaker 1: or that, and they do it. Its instinct keeps the
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Speaker 1: oil in the sea and the bird in the air.
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Speaker 1: But we go where our legs carry us as reason
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Speaker 1: as directed. You can't ask an animal why did you
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Speaker 1: do this? Or why did you do that? You just
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Speaker 1: eat it. But a man you ask, and he has
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Speaker 1: to answer. Being a reasonable creature, that's why we as
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Speaker 1: jails and punishment and are answerable for our sins aery
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Speaker 1: every scene we has to answer for great or small.
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Speaker 1: But an animal don't apt to answer. It's innocent you
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Speaker 1: eat it, or else you LLave it be. My father thought,
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Speaker 1: for a time, except for dogs and some old cats,
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Speaker 1: he said, He mused among his memories, for a time,
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Speaker 1: I have known some sinful cats. Eric, he said, He
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Speaker 1: would enlarge on the one of instinct. He would explain
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Speaker 1: how swallows and starlings and storks and such like. Birds
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Speaker 1: were driven by instinct thousands of miles, getting drowned on
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Speaker 1: the way and dashed to pieces against lighthouses. Else they
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Speaker 1: would freeze and starve where they was eery, said my father.
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Speaker 1: And every bird knew by instinct what sort of nest
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Speaker 1: it had to build, no one ever showing it or
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Speaker 1: tailing it. Kangaroos carried their young in pouches by instinct.
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Speaker 1: By men, being reasonable creature made perambulators. Chickens ran about
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Speaker 1: by instinct directly. They were born, not like human children
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Speaker 1: who had to be carried and taken care of until
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Speaker 1: reason came. And jolly lucky that was for the chicken,
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Speaker 1: for oh An would carry them, said my father. I
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Speaker 1: can't imagine. I remember that I put my father into
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Speaker 1: difficulty by asking him why Providence had not given birds
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Speaker 1: an instinct against beating themselves against lighthouses, and moths against
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Speaker 1: the gas jet and candle flame. For in the room
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Speaker 1: over the shop on a summer's night, it was quite
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Speaker 1: unpleasant to read a book because of the disabled flies
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Speaker 1: and moths that fell scorched upon its pages. It's to
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Speaker 1: teach 'em some lessons, said my father at last. But
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Speaker 1: why it's to teach 'em ery, I don't rightly know.
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Speaker 1: And sometimes he would talk with illustrative stories of ill
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Speaker 1: gotten gold, never staying with the getter. And sometimes he
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Speaker 1: would talk of murders, for there were still many murders
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Speaker 1: in the world, and how they always came out. I
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Speaker 1: am as you may, And always he was ready to
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Speaker 1: point out the goodness and wisdom, the cleverness, forethought, ingenuity,
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Speaker 1: and kindness of Providence in the most earnest and fluttering manner.
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Speaker 1: With such high discourse did we enliven our long trudges
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Speaker 1: between cherry Gardens and Chessing Hanger. And my father's stone
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Speaker 1: was always so exalted that, with a real shock, I
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Speaker 1: presently came to realize that every Sunday evening we were
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Speaker 1: in plain English stealing and receiving stolen produce from Lord
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Speaker 1: Bramblele's gardens. Indeed, I cannot imagine how we should have
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Speaker 1: got along without that weekly raid. Our little home of
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Speaker 1: cherry gardens was largely supported by my father's share in
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Speaker 1: the profits of these transactions. When the produce was too
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Speaker 1: good and costly for the cherry garden's needs, he would
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Speaker 1: take it down to Cliffstone and sell it to a
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Speaker 1: friend there who had a fashionable trade. Sarnak paused, go on, said, radiant,
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Speaker 1: you are making us believe in your story. It sounds
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Speaker 1: more and more as if you had been there. It
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Speaker 1: is so circumstantial. Who was this Lord bramble I have
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Speaker 1: always been curious about lords. Part six. Let me tell
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Speaker 1: you my story in my own way, said Sarnak. If
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Speaker 1: I answer questions, I shall get lost. You are all
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Speaker 1: ready to ask a hundred questions already about things I
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Speaker 1: have mentioned, and poets familiar to me but incomprehensible to you,
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Speaker 1: because our world has forgotten them. And if I weaken
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Speaker 1: towards you, you will trail me away and away, farther
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Speaker 1: and farther from my father and my uncle Julip. We
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Speaker 1: shall just talk about manners and customs, and about philosophy
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Speaker 1: and history. I want to tell my story. Go on
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Speaker 1: with your story, said Sandray. This uncle John Julip of mine,
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Speaker 1: although he was my mother's brother, was a cynical, opinionated man.
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Speaker 1: He was very short and fatter than was usual among gardeners.
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Speaker 1: He had a smooth white face and a wise, self
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Speaker 1: satisfied smile. To begin with, I saw him only on Sundays,
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Speaker 1: and in white, sharp sleeves and a large straw head.
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Speaker 1: He made disparaging remarks about my physique and about the
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Speaker 1: air of cherry gardens every time he saw me. His
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Speaker 1: wife had been a dissenter of some sort and had
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Speaker 1: become a charchwoman under protest. She too was whitefaced, and
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Speaker 1: her health was bad. She complained of pains, but my
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Speaker 1: uncle John Julip disparaged her pains because he said they
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Speaker 1: were not in a reasonable place. There was stomach ache
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Speaker 1: and back ache, and heartburn and the wind, but her
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Speaker 1: pains were neither hair nor there. They were therefore pains
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Speaker 1: of the imagination, and had no claim upon our sympathy.
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Speaker 1: When I was nearly thirteen years old, my father and
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Speaker 1: uncle began planning for me to go over to the
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Speaker 1: Chesinghenger gardens and be an undergardener. This was a project
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Speaker 1: I disliked very greatly. Not only did I find my
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Speaker 1: uncle unattractive, but I thought weeding and digging and most
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Speaker 1: of the exercises of garden extremely tiring and boring. I
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Speaker 1: had taken very kindly to reading. I liked languages. I
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Speaker 1: inherited something of my father's lacuociousness, and I had won
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Speaker 1: a special prize for an essay in my school. This
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Speaker 1: had fired the most unreasonable ambitions in me to write,
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Speaker 1: to write in newspapers, possibly even to write books. At
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Speaker 1: Cliffstone was what was called a public library, to which
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Speaker 1: the householders of Cliffstone had access and from which members
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Speaker 1: of their families could borrow books. During holidays. I would
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Speaker 1: be changing my book almost a But at Chusinghnger there
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Speaker 1: were no books at all. My sister Fanny encouraged me
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Speaker 1: in my reading. She too was a voracious reader of novels,
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Speaker 1: and she shared my dislike of the idea that I
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Speaker 1: should become a gardener. In those days, you must understand
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Speaker 1: no attempt was made to gage the natural capacity of
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Speaker 1: a child human being, so were expected to be grateful
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Speaker 1: for any opportunity of getting a living. Parents bundled their
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Speaker 1: children into any employment that came handy, and so most
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Speaker 1: people followed occupations that were misfits, that did not give
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Speaker 1: fool scope for such natural gifts as they possessed, and
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Speaker 1: which commonly cramped or crippled them. This in itself diffused
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Speaker 1: a very discontent throughout the community and inflicted upon the
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Speaker 1: great majority of people strains and restraints and suppressions that
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Speaker 1: ate away their possibility of positive happiness. Most youngsters, as
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Speaker 1: they grew up, girls as well as boys, experienced a sudden,
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Speaker 1: tragic curtailment of freedom and discovered themselves forced into some
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Speaker 1: unchosen specific drudgery from which it was very difficult to escape.
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Speaker 1: One summer holiday came when, instead of enjoying delightful long
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Speaker 1: days of play and book devouring, in Clifton, as I
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Speaker 1: had hitherto done. I was sent off over the hills
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Speaker 1: to stay with Uncle John Gulip, and see how I
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Speaker 1: got on with him. I still remember the burning disgust,
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Speaker 1: the sense of immolation with which I lacked my little
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Speaker 1: valleys up the hills and over the downs to the gardens.
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Speaker 1: This Lord Bramble Radiant, was one of the landloors who
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Speaker 1: were so important during the reigns of the Hanoverian kings
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Speaker 1: up to the time of Queen Victoria the Good. They
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Speaker 1: owned large areas of England, and as private property they
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Speaker 1: could do what they liked with it. In the days
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Speaker 1: of Victoria the Good and her immediate predecessors, these landlords,
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Speaker 1: who had ruled the Empire through the House of Lords,
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Speaker 1: made a losing fight for predominance against the new industrialists,
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Speaker 1: men who employed great masses of people for their private
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Speaker 1: gain in the iron and steel industries, cotton and wool,
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Speaker 1: beer and sipping. And these again gave way to a
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Speaker 1: rather different type who developed advertisement and a political and
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Speaker 1: financial use of newspapers and new methods of finance. The
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Speaker 1: old landholding families had to adapt themselves to the new
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Speaker 1: powers or be pushed aside. Lord Bramble was one of
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Speaker 1: those pushed aside. An indignant, old fashioned, impovertist landowner, he
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Speaker 1: was in a slough of debts. His estates covered many
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Speaker 1: square miles. He owned farms and woodlands, a great white,
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Speaker 1: uncomfortable house far too roomy for his shrunken manes, and
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Speaker 1: two square miles of park. The park was greatly neglected.
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Speaker 1: It was covered with groups of old trees, infested and rotten,
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Speaker 1: with fangus, rabbits and moles abounded, and thistles and nettles.
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Speaker 1: There were no young trees there at all. The fences
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Speaker 1: and gates were badly patched, and here and there ran
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Speaker 1: degenerating roads, but boards threatening trespasses abounded, and notices saying
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Speaker 1: no thoroughfare, for it was the dearest privilege of the
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Speaker 1: British landlord to restrict the free movements of ordinary people.
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Speaker 1: And Lord Bramble guarded his wilderness with devotion. Great areas
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Speaker 1: of gold land in England in those days were in
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Speaker 1: a similar state of picturesquely secluded dilapidation. Those were the
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Speaker 1: lands where they did the shooting, said radiant, How do
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Speaker 1: you know I have seen a picture? They stood in
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Speaker 1: a line along the edge of a copse with brown
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Speaker 1: leaved trees, and a faint smell of decay and a
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Speaker 1: touch of autumnal dampness in the air. And they shot
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Speaker 1: lad pellets at birds. They did, and the beaters, I
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Speaker 1: was pressed into that service once or twice drove the
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Speaker 1: birds the pheasants towards them. Shooting parties used to come
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Speaker 1: to Chesinghanger, and the shooting used to go on day
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Speaker 1: after day. It was done with tremendous solemnity. But why,
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Speaker 1: asked a willow, Yes, said radiant. Why did men do it?
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Speaker 1: I don't know, said Sarnak. All I know is that
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Speaker 1: at certain sessions of the year, the great majority of
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Speaker 1: the gentlemen of England, who were supposed to be the
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Speaker 1: leaders and intelligence of the land, who were understood to
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Speaker 1: guide its destinies and control its future, went out into
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Speaker 1: the woods or on the moors to massacre birds or
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Speaker 1: various sources with guns, birds, bread, specially at great expense.
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Speaker 1: For the purpose of this slaughter, these noble sportsmen were
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Speaker 1: marshaled by gamekeepers. They stood in rows, the landscape was
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Speaker 1: animated with the popping of their guns. The highest in
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Speaker 1: the land participated gravely in this national function and popped
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Speaker 1: with distinction. The men of the class were, in truth
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Speaker 1: at just that level above imbecility. While the banging of
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Speaker 1: a gun and the fiell of seeing a bird sweled
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Speaker 1: and droope is inexhaustibly amusing, they never tired of it.
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Speaker 1: The bang of the gun seems to have been essential
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Speaker 1: to the sublimity of the sensation of these sportsmen. It
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Speaker 1: wasn't mere killing, because in that case these people could
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Speaker 1: also have assisted in killing the sheep and oxen and
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Speaker 1: pigs required by the butchers. But this sport they left
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Speaker 1: to men of an inferior social class. Shooting birds on
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Speaker 1: the wing was the essential idea. When Lord Bramble was
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Speaker 1: not killing pheasants or gross he shot in the south
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Speaker 1: of France at perplexed pigeons with clipped wings just let
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Speaker 1: out of traps. Or he hunted. Not real animal hunting,
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Speaker 1: not a fair fight with bear or tiger or elephant
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Speaker 1: in a jungle, but chasing of foxes, small stinking red
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Speaker 1: animals about the size of water spaniels, which were sedulously
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Speaker 1: kept from extinction for this purpose of hunting. They were
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Speaker 1: hunted across cultivated land and the hunted road behind the
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Speaker 1: back of dogs. Lord Bramble dressed himself up with extreme care,
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Speaker 1: in a red jacket and breeches of pig skin to
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Speaker 1: do this. For the rest of his time, the Goldman
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Speaker 1: played a card game called Bridge, and mechanical that anyone
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Speaker 1: nowadays would be able to read out the results and
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Speaker 1: exact probabilities of every deal directly. He saw his carbs.
21:09
Speaker 1: There were four sets of thirteen cars each, but Lord Bramble,
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Speaker 1: who had never learned properly to count up to thirteen,
21:17
Speaker 1: found it full of dramatic surprises and wonderful sensations. A
21:23
Speaker 1: large part of his time was spent in going from
21:26
Speaker 1: racecourse to racecourse. They raised especially flimsy breed of horses
21:30
Speaker 1: in those days. There again he dressed with care. In
21:34
Speaker 1: the illustrated papers in the public library, I would see
21:38
Speaker 1: photographs of Lord Bramble with a silk hat, a top hat,
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Speaker 1: you know, coked very much on one side in the paddock,
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Speaker 1: or snapped with a lady friend. There was much betting
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Speaker 1: and knowingness about this horse racing. His lordship dined with
21:53
Speaker 1: comparative intelligence, airing only a little on the excessive side
21:57
Speaker 1: with the port people see smoked in those days, and
22:02
Speaker 1: Lord Bramble would consume three or four cigars a day.
22:05
Speaker 1: Pipes he thought plebeian, and cigarettes effeminate. He could read
22:10
Speaker 1: a newspaper, but not a book, being incapable of sustained attention.
22:14
Speaker 1: After dinner in town he commonly went to a theater
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Speaker 1: or music hall where women could be seen more or
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Speaker 1: less unraped. The clothing of that time filled such people
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Speaker 1: as Lord Bramble with a coir covetousness for nakedness. The
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Speaker 1: normal beauty of the human body was a secret and
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Speaker 1: a mystery, and half the art and decoration of Chessinghnger
22:36
Speaker 1: House played stimulatingly with the forbidden vision. In that past
22:42
Speaker 1: existence of mine, I took the way of life of
22:45
Speaker 1: Lord Bramble as a matter of course. But now that
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Speaker 1: I recall it, I begin to see the enormous absurdity
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Speaker 1: of these assassins of frightened birds, These supporters of horses
22:57
Speaker 1: and ostlers, These peepers at feminine thighs and shoulder blades.
23:03
Speaker 1: Their women, sympathized with their gunmanship, called their horses. The
23:07
Speaker 1: deers cultivated, dwarfed and crippled breed of pet dogs, and
23:12
Speaker 1: yielded the peeps expected of them. Such was the life
23:16
Speaker 1: of the aristocratic sword of people in those days, they said,
23:20
Speaker 1: the tone of what was considered a hard, bright, healthy life.
23:25
Speaker 1: The rest of the community admired them greatly and imitated
23:28
Speaker 1: them to the best of its ability. The tenant farmer,
23:31
Speaker 1: if he could not shoot pheasants short rabbits, and if
23:35
Speaker 1: he could not bid twenty pounds notes at the fashionable
23:38
Speaker 1: race meeting at Goodwood, put his half crown upon his
23:41
Speaker 1: fancy at the Cliffston races on by four downs with
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Speaker 1: his head cocked over one eye, as much like Lord
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Speaker 1: Bramble and King Edward as possible. Great multitudes of people
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Speaker 1: there were whose lives were shaped completely by the habits
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Speaker 1: and traditions of these leaders. There was my uncle John Julip,
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Speaker 1: for example. His father had been a gardener, and his
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Speaker 1: grandfather before him, and almost all his feminine ancestry and
24:08
Speaker 1: his aunts and cousins were as the phrase went in service,
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Speaker 1: None of the people round and above the downstairs of
24:16
Speaker 1: Chessinganger had natural manners. All were dealing in some more
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Speaker 1: or less plausible imitation of some real lady or gentleman.
24:26
Speaker 1: My uncle John Julip found his ideal in a certain
24:29
Speaker 1: notorious Sir John French Cuthbertson. He sought similar hats and
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Speaker 1: adopted similar attitudes. He beat heavily in imitation of his models,
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Speaker 1: but he beat less. Fortunately this my aunt resented, but
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Speaker 1: she found great comfort in the way in which his
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Speaker 1: clothing and gestures understudied. Sir John. If only he had
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Speaker 1: been born a gentleman, said my aunt, everything had been
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Speaker 1: all right. Is a natural sportsman eats his eart out
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Speaker 1: in the guard burdens. He certainly did not work his
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Speaker 1: heart out. I do not remember seeing him dig, or career,
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Speaker 1: or wheel a arrow. My memory of him in the
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Speaker 1: garden is of one who stood one hand gripping a
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Speaker 1: hoe as if it were a riding whip under the
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Speaker 1: tail of his coat, and the other gesticulating or pointing
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Speaker 1: out what had to be done to my father and myself.
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Speaker 1: He was always consciously aristocratic, bearing himself in the grand manner.
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Speaker 1: This he did, although my father was as third as
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Speaker 1: tall again as he was, and far more abundantly intelligent.
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Speaker 1: He always called my father smith, what are you going
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Speaker 1: to do with that boy? Smith? He would ask, seems
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Speaker 1: to me, once feeding up an open air. My father,
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Speaker 1: who secretly shared the general view that my uncle John
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Speaker 1: and her happier stars would have made a very fine gentleman.
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Speaker 1: Always tried, as he expressed it, to keep his end
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Speaker 1: up by calling my uncle John. He would answer, can't say,
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Speaker 1: as I've rightly settled that John is a regular bookworm nowadays,
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Speaker 1: Say why you like to him books, said my uncle
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Speaker 1: John Julie, with a concentrated scorn of books that was
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Speaker 1: essentially English. You can't get anything out of book that
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Speaker 1: hasn't been put into them. It stands to reason there's
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Speaker 1: nothing in books that didn't first come out of the stile.
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Speaker 1: Books is flattened flowers at the best. As his lordship
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Speaker 1: said at dinner only the other night, my father was
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Speaker 1: much struck by the idea. That's why I tell him,
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Speaker 1: he said. And exactly besides, who's going to put anything
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Speaker 1: into a book that's worth knowing? Said my uncle. It's
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Speaker 1: like expecting these hair tipsters in the papers to give
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Speaker 1: away something worth keeping to their selves, not it? Earth
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Speaker 1: the time, my father agreed, I expect they are telling
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Speaker 1: you lies in these books of yours, and laughing a
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Speaker 1: ew all the same, he reflected, with an abrupt lipse
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Speaker 1: from speculation to reverence. There is one book John. He
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Speaker 1: had remembered the Bible. I wasn't speaking of that, Smith,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle sharply sufficient unto the day. I mean,
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Speaker 1: that's sounded stuff. I hated my days of trial in
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Speaker 1: the gardens. Once or twice during that unpleasant months, I
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Speaker 1: was sent with messages up to the kitchen, and once
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Speaker 1: to the pantry of the Great House. There I said
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Speaker 1: something unfortunate for my uncle, something that was to wipe
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Speaker 1: out all possibility of Gardener's career for me. The butler,
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Speaker 1: mister Petterton, was also a secondary aristocrat, but in a
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Speaker 1: larger and quite different manner from that of my uncle.
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Speaker 1: He towered up and looked down the slopes of himself.
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Speaker 1: His many chins were pink and stebbed by his collar,
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Speaker 1: and his hair was yellow and very shining. I had
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Speaker 1: to deliver into his hands a basket of cucumbers and
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Speaker 1: a bunch of blue flowers called barrage, used in the
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Speaker 1: mixing of summer drinks. He was standing at a table,
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Speaker 1: talking respectfully to a foxy little man in tweeds, who
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Speaker 1: was eating bread and cheese and drinking beer. This, I
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Speaker 1: was to learn letter was Lord Brambo's agent. There was
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Speaker 1: also a young footman in this room, a subterranean room.
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Speaker 1: It was with heavily barred windows, and he was cleaning
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Speaker 1: silver plate with exemplary industry. So you brought these from
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Speaker 1: the gardens, said mister Petherton, with fine irony, and may
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Speaker 1: I ask why, mister why, Sir John did not condescend
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Speaker 1: to bring them himself. He told me to bring him,
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Speaker 1: I said, and pray, who may you be? I am
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Speaker 1: Aerry Smith, I said, mister Julip is my uncle, Ah,
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Speaker 1: said mister Petterton, and struck by a thought, that's the
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Speaker 1: son of Smith, who's a sort of green grocer in
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Speaker 1: Clipstone Cherry Garden. Sir Willie Beet, I haven't seen you
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Speaker 1: over here before, my boy. Have you ever visited as before?
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Speaker 1: Not here, sir, not here. But you come over to
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Speaker 1: the gardens perhaps nearly every Sunday, sir exactly, and usually,
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Speaker 1: I suppose Master Smith. There is something to carry back
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Speaker 1: almost always, sir, something a bit heavy, not too heavy,
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Speaker 1: I said, bravely, you see, sir, said mister Petterton to
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Speaker 1: the foxy little man in tweets. I began to realize
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Speaker 1: that something unpleasant was in the wind. When this latter
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Speaker 1: person set himself to cross examine me in a rapid
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Speaker 1: snapping manner, what was it I carried? I became very
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Speaker 1: red about the face and ears, and declared, I did
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Speaker 1: not know did I ever carry grapes. I didn't know Pierce,
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Speaker 1: I didn't know Cillary. I didn't know well, I know,
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Speaker 1: said the agent. I know, so why should I ask
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Speaker 1: you farther? Get out of here. I went back to
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Speaker 1: my uncle and said nothing to him of this very
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Speaker 1: disagreeable conversation. But I knew quite well even then that
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Speaker 1: I had not heard the last of this matter. End
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Speaker 1: of Section four