“Not the ghost of one,” said he, dissembling his amusement.  “Professions—­don’t they all more or less involve sitting shut up in stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile papers, doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, like a slave in the hold of a galley?  No, if I’m to work, I must work at something that will keep me above decks—­something that will keep me out of doors, in touch with the air and the earth.  I might become an agricultural labourer,—­but that’s not very munificently paid; or a farmer,—­but that would require perhaps more capital than I could command, and anyhow the profits are uncertain.  I’ve an uncle who’s a bit of a farmer, and year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss.  ’Well, what’s left? ...  Ah, a gardener.  I don’t think I should half mind being a gardener.”

Maria Dolores looked as if she weren’t sure whether or not to take him seriously.

“A gardener?  That’s not very munificently paid either, is it?” she suggested, trying her ground.

“Alas, I fear not,” sighed John.  Then he made a grave face.  “But would you have me entirely mercenary?  Money isn’t everything here below.”

Maria Dolores smiled.  She saw that for the moment at least he was not to be taken seriously.

“True,” she agreed, “though it ran in my mind that to earn money, so that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all.”

“I had forgotten that,” said the light-minded fellow.  “I was thinking of occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth.  A gardener’s occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of touch with her, and the most intimate.”

“Do they call the earth her in English?” asked Maria Dolores.  “I thought they said it.”

“I’m afraid, for the greater part, they do,” answered John.  “But it’s barbarous of them, it’s unfilial.  Our brown old mother,—­fancy begrudging her the credit of her sex!  Our brown and green old mother; our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and yet perennially, radiantly young.  Look at her now,” he cried, circling the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, “look at her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,—­one would say a bride arrayed for the altar.  Such is her infinite variety.  Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the sweetness of her,—­oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a Pagan of Eld.  The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—­I could build temples to her.”

“And the crawling snake?” put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of her eyes.

“The crawling snake,” quickly retorted John, “serves a most useful purpose.  He establishes the raison d’etre of man.  Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent’s head.”

Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.