After a
time, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the empty
store-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; but
nothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pulling
to pieces one of the company's sheds in order to get materials for
making a high and very close fence round his patch, as if the growing
of vegetables were a patented process, or an awful and holy mystery
entrusted to the keeping of his race.
Heyst, following from a distance the progress of Wang's gardening and of
these precautions--there was nothing else to look at--was amused at
the thought that he, in his own person, represented the market for
its produce. The Chinaman had found several packets of seeds in the
store-rooms, and had surrendered to an irresistible impulse to put them
into the ground. He would make his master pay for the vegetables which
he was raising to satisfy his instinct. And, looking silently at the
silent Wang going about his work in the bungalow in his unhasty,
steady way; Heyst envied the Chinaman's obedience to his instincts, the
powerful simplicity of purpose which made his existence appear almost
automatic in the mysterious precision of its facts.
CHAPTER TWO
During his master's absence at Sourabaya, Wang had busied himself with
the ground immediately in front of the principal bungalow.
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