And
the joy was that it was all mine alienably - groomed hedgerow,
spotless road, decent greystone cottage, serried spinney, tasselled
copse, apple-bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree. A light puff
of wind - it scattered flakes of may over the gleaming rails - gave
me a faint whiff as it might have been of fresh cocoanut, and I
knew that the golden gorse was in bloom somewhere out of sight.
Linneeus had thanked God on his bended knees when he first saw a
field of it; and, by the way, the navvy was on his knees, too. But
he was by no means praying. He was purely disgustful.
The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the
back of the seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy
was now dead. If that were the case it would be time for me to go;
but I knew that so long as a man trusts himself to the current of
Circumstance, reaching out for and rejecting nothing that comes his
way, no harm can overtake him. It is the contriver, the schemer,
who is caught by the Law, and never the philosopher. I knew that
when the play was played, Destiny herself would move me on from the
corpse; and I felt very sorry for the doctor.
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