ve me the
saw."

I handed him the thin-bladed saw, and he rapidly cut out the old hard
bough, close down to the place where it branched from the dumpy trunk,
and then, handing me the tool, he knelt down on a pad of carpet he
carried in his tremendous pocket.

"Now look here," he said; and taking his sharp pruning-knife he cut off
every mark of the saw, and trimmed the bark.

I looked on attentively till he had ended.

"Well," he said, "ain't you going to ask why I did that?"

"I know, sir," I said. "To make it neat."

"Only partly right, Grant. I've cut that off smoothly so that no rain
may lodge and rot the place before the wound has had time to heal."

"And will it heal, sir?"

"Yes, Grant. In time Nature will spread a ring of bark round that,
which will thicken and close in till the place is healed completely
over."

Then he busily showed me the use of the saw and knife among the big
standard trees, using them liberally to get rid of all the scrubby,
crowded, useless branches that lived upon the strength of the tree and
did no work, only kept out the light, air, and sunshine from those that
did work and bear fruit.

"Why it almost seems, sir," I said one day, "as if Nature had made the
trees so badly that man was obliged to improve them."

"Ah, I'm glad to hear you say that, my lad," he said; "but you are not
right. I'm only a gardener, but I've noticed these things a great deal.
Nature is not a bungler. She gives us apple and plum trees, and they
grow and bear fruit in a natural and sufficient way. It is because man
wants them to bear more and bigger fruit, and for more to grow on a
small piece of ground than Nature would plant, that man has to cut and
prune."

"But suppose Nature planted a lot of trees on a small piece of ground,"
I said, "what then?"

"What then, Grant? Why, for a time they'd grow up thin and poor and
spindly, till one of them made a start and overtopped the others. Then
it would go on growing, and the others would dwindle and die away."

The time glided on, and I kept learning the many little things about the
place pretty fast. As the months went on I became of some use to my
employer over his accounts, and by degrees pretty well knew his
position.

It seemed that he had been a widower for many years, and Mrs Dodley,
the housekeeper and general servant all in one, confided to me one day
that "Missus's" bonnets and shawls and gowns were all hanging up in
their places