The gardener did not talk like this naturally, any more than you or I do. But in addition to his many other poses he posed as being unique. Unfortunately there is nothing entirely unique except insanity. Of course there are better things than insanity. On the other hand, it is rather vulgar to be perfectly sane. The suffragette went to an hotel, and the gardener went to meet Mr. Samuel Rust at their appointed meeting-place. Mr. Rust looked even more colourless against the brownness of the town than he had seemed against the redness of his place. He wore town clothes, too, and one noticed them, which is what one does not do with a well-dressed man. The ideal, of course, is to look as if the Almighty made you to fit your clothes. There are a great many unfortunates whose appearance persists in confessing the truth—that the tailor made their clothes to fit them. Mr. Samuel Rust, however, was not self-conscious. He escaped that pitfall, but left other people to be conscious of his appearance for him. “Come along,” he said, skipping up to the gardener like a goat, or like a little hill. “I’ve sounded my cousin on the telephone, and the outlook is not otherwise than middling hopeful. He’s promised, in fact, to ship you on board the _Caribbeania_. The question is—what as? What can you do?” “I am a gardener—in theory.” “Unfortunately only facts are shipped on Abel’s line.” “Then all is over. For I am just a sheaf of theories held together by a cage of bones. There is no fact in me at all.” “Don’t be humble. It’s waste of time in such a humiliating world.” “I’m not humble”—the gardener indignantly repudiated the suggestion. “I’m proud of being what I am. I am more than worthy of the _Caribbeania_.” “Then come and prove it,” said Mr. Rust, and dragged the gardener passionately down the street. The gardener found himself placed on the door-step of an aspiring corner house. Mr. Samuel Rust stood on a lower step with his back to the door. It is part of the code of shadows to pretend, when you have rung the bell, that you do not care whether the door is opened or not. The gardener, following the code of the socially simple, stood with his nose nearly touching the knocker, and his eyes glued to the spot where the head of the servant might be expected to appear. It therefore devolved on him to draw Mr. Rust’s attention to the eventual appearance of a black-frocked white-capped answer to his summons. “Ah!” exclaimed Samuel, “Mr. Abel in?” The maid, with fine dramatic feeling, stepped aside, thus opening up a vista, at the end of which could be seen Mr. Abel advancing with both hands outstretched.