CHAPTER NINETEENThe last car having gone off down the drive, Sam Bolton followed it in the direction of the lodge. He was the under gardener and he had been helping to get the cars away. He was now about the unlawful business of courting Mary Robertson with whom he had an assignation which would have been strictly forbidden by her father if he had known anything about it. Mr Robertson was head gardener, and an autocrat. His notions of parental authority might, as Mary declared, be fifty years out of date, but she wouldn’t have dared to flout them openly, and he looked higher for her than Sam, whom he admitted to be a steady, hardworking lad but “withoot sae much ambeetion as ye could lay on a saxpence”. He had a distressing homily which he was only too willing to deliver as to the extent t
