Not that John and Robert drew very close together in
their lives; for John was rough, he smelt of the windy brae; and
Robert was gentle, and smacked of the garden in the hollow.
Perhaps it is to my shame that I liked John the better of the two;
he had grit and dash, and that salt of the Old Adam that pleases
men with any savage inheritance of blood; and he was a way-farer
besides, and took my gipsy fancy. But however that may be, and
however Robert's profile may be blurred in the boyish sketch that
follows, he was a man of a most quaint and beautiful nature, whom,
if it were possible to recast a piece of work so old, I should like
well to draw again with a maturer touch. And as I think of him and
of John, I wonder in what other country two such men would be found
dwelling together, in a hamlet of some twenty cottages, in the
woody fold of a green hill.
CHAPTER V. AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER
I THINK I might almost have said the last: somewhere, indeed, in
the uttermost glens of the Lammermuir or among the southwestern
hills there may yet linger a decrepid representative of this bygone
good fellowship; but as far as actual experience goes, I have only
met one man in my life who might fitly be quoted in the same breath
with Andrew Fairservice, - though without his vices. He was a man
whose very presence could impart a savour of quaint antiquity to
the baldest and most modern flower-plots.
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