Not that he was at all behindhand about interpretation; but as long as he could fetch and earn, at planting box and doing borders, two shillings and ninepence a day and his beer, he was not going to be on for kingdom come.
I told him that I scarcely thought his view of our condition here would be approved by wise men who had found time to study the subject.

But he answered that whatever their words might be, their doings showed that they knew what was the first thing to attend to.

And if it ever happened him to come across a parson who was as full of heaven outside as he was inside his surplice, he would keep his garden in order for nothing better than his blessing.
I knew of no answer to be made to this.

And indeed he seemed to be aware that his conversation was too deep for me; so he leaned upon his spade, and rubbed his long blue chin in the shadow of the church tower, holding as he did the position of sexton, and preparing even now to dig a grave.
"I keeps them well away from you," he said, as he began to chop out a new oblong in the turf; "many a shilling have I been offered by mothers about their little ones, to put 'em inside of the 'holy ring,' as we calls this little cluster; but not for five golden guineas would I do it, and have to face the Captain, dead or alive, about it.

We heard that he was dead, because it was put in all the papers; and a pleasant place I keeps for him, to come home alongside of his family.