[Brownsmith’s Boy by George Manville Fenn]@TWC D-Link book
Brownsmith’s Boy

CHAPTER FIVE
12/16

"I don't think so, sir," I said dismally.
"Not such a good life for a boy in winter when things are bare, as in summer when the flowers are out and the fruit comes on.

Like fruit, don't you ?" "Yes, sir, but you don't let your boys eat the fruit." "Tchah! I should never miss what you would eat," he said with a laugh, "and you would soon get tired of the apples and pears and gooseberries.
Think you'd like to come, eh-em?
You don't know; of course you don't.
Wouldn't make a gentleman of you.

I never heard of a gentleman gardener; plenty of gentlemen farmers, though." "Yes, sir," I said, with my heart beating fast, "I've heard of gentlemen farmers." "But not of gentlemen market-gardeners, eh?
No, my boy, they don't call us gentlemen, and I never professed to be one; but a man may be a gentleman at heart whatever his business, and that's better than being a gentleman in name." I looked up in his fresh red face, and there was such a kindly look in it that I felt happier than I had been for weeks, and I don't know what moved me to do it, but I laid my hand upon his arm.
He looked down at me thoughtfully as he went on.
"People are rather strange about these things.

Gentleman farmer cultivates a hundred acres of land that he pays a hundred and fifty pounds a year for say: market-gardener cultivates twenty acres that he pays two or three hundred for; and they call the one a gentleman, the other a gardener.

But it don't matter, Master Dennison, a bit.


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