Again and again she took a peep, and whenever she looked, there, two stories below, shone the same bare round cranium, supernaturally red, and almost intolerably bright, as if it had been in the very focus of a burning-glass. It made her head ache to think of it!

Nevertheless she could not long remove her eyes, she was fascinated towards that glowing sconce, as larks are said to be by the dazzling of a mirror.

In the mean time, to her over-heated fancy, the bald pate appeared to grow redder and redder, till it actually seemed red-hot. It would have hardly surprised her if the blood, boiling a gallop, had gushed out of the two ears, or if the head, after smoking a little, had burst into a flame by spontaneous combustion. It would never have astonished her had he danced off in a frenzy of brain-fever, or suddenly dropped down dead from a stroke of the sun. However he did neither, but still kept work, work, working on in the blazing heat, like a salamander.

"It don't signify," muttered the old lady, "if he can stand it I can't," and again she withdrew from the spectacle. But it was only for a minute. She returned to the window, and fixing her eyes on the bald, shining, glowing object, considerately pitched on it a cool pot of beer-not literally, indeed, but in the shape of five penny pieces, screwed up tight in brown paper.

MORAL. -There is nothing like well-directed benevolence!

CHAPTER VIII.

"YES, all gardeners is thieves!"

As I could not dispute the truth of this sweeping proposition from practical experience, I passed it over in silence, and contented myself with asking the Widow whence she acquired all her horticultural knowledge, which she informed me came "out of her Mawe."

"It was him as give me that, too,” she whimpered, "for he always humored my flowering; and if ever a grave deserved a strewing over it's his'n — There's a noble old helm.”

Very, indeed.

"Yes, quite an old antique, and would be beautiful if I could only hang a few parachutes from its branches."

I presume you allude to the parasites?

"Well, I suppose I do. And look there's my harbor. By and by, when I'm more honeysuckled I shall be waterproof, but I ain't quite growed over enough yet to sit in without an umbrella."

As I had now pretty well inspected her back, including one warm corner, in which she told me she had a good mind to cow-cumber we turned toward the house, the Widow leading the way, when wheeling sharply round, she popped a new question.

"What do you think of my walk ?”

Why that is kept very clean and neat.

'Ah, I don't mean my gravel, but my walk. At present you see I go in a pretty straight line, but suppose I went a little more serpentiny — more zigzaggy · - and praps deviating about among the clumps - don't you think I might look more picturesque ?"

I ventured to tell her, at the risk of sending her ideas to her front, that if she meant her gait, it was best as it was; but that if she alluded to her path, a straight one was still the best, considering the size of her grounds.

"Well, I dare say you're right," she replied, "for I'm only a quarter of a haker if you measure me all round."

By this time we were close to the house, where the appearance of a vine suggested to me the query whether the proprietor ever gathered any grapes.

"Ah my wine, my wine," replied the Widow, with as grave a shake of the head, and as melancholy a tone as if she had really drunk to fatal excess of the ruby juice. "That wine will be the death of me, if somebody don't nail me up. My poor head won't bear ladder-work; and so all training or pruning myself is out of the question. Howsomever, Miss Sharp is just as bad, and so I'm not the only one whose wine goes where it should n't."

66

Not by hundreds of dozens, thought I, but there was no time allowed for musing over my own loss by waste and leakage: I was roused by a now come here," and lugged round the corner of the house to an adjacent building, which bore about the same proportion to the villa as a calf to a cow.

"This here's the washus."

So I should have conjectured. "Yes, it's the washus now

but it's to be a greenus. I intend to have a glazed roof let into it for a conservatory, in the winter, when I can't be stood out in the open air. They've a greenus at Number Five, and a hottus besides - and thinks I, if so be I do want to force a little, I can force myself in the copper!'

The Copper!

"Yes. I'm uncommon partial to foreign outlandish plants and if I'm an African, you know, or any of them tropicals, I shall almost want baking."

These schemes and contrivances were so whimsical, and at the same time so Bucklersburyish, that in spite of myself, my risible muscles began to twitch, and I felt that peculiar internal quiver about the diaphragm which results from suppressed laughter. Accordingly, not to offend the Widow, I hurried to take my leave, but she was not disposed to part with me so easily.

"Now come, be candid, and tell me before you go, what you think of me altogether. Am I shrubby enough? I fancy sometimes that I ought to be more deciduous." Not at all. You are just what you ought to be shrubby and flowery, and gravelly and grassy and in summer you must be a perfect nosegay.

“Well — so I ham. But in winter, now, do you really think I am green enough to go through the winter?"

Quite. Plenty of yews, hollies, box, and lots of horticul tural laurals.

[I thought now that I was off- but it was a mistake.] Well, but if you really must go— only one more question and it's to beg a favor. You know last autumn we went steaming up to Twitnam?”

Yes well?

"Well, and we went all over Mr. What 's-his-name 's Willa."

Pope's well?

“Well then, somebody told us as how Mr. Pope was very famous for his Quincunx. Could you get one a slip of it?"

CHAPTER IX.

"WELL, for my part," exclaims Fashion," those who please may garden; but I shall be quite satisfied with what I get from my Fruiterer, and my Greengrocer, and my bouquets. For it seems to me, sir, according to your description of that Widow, and her operations, that gardening must be more of a trouble than a pleasure. To think of toiling in a most unfashionable bonnet and filthy gloves, for the sake of a few flowers, that one may buy as good or better, and made artificially by the first hands in Paris! Not to name the vulgarity of their breeding. Why I should faint if I thought my orange flowers came out of a grocer's tea-chest, or my camelia out of the butter-tub!"

No doubt of it, madam, and that you would never come to if sprinkled with common water instead of Eau de Cologne. "Of course not. I loathe pure water ever since I have heard that all London bathes in it the lower classes and all. If that is what one waters with, I could never garden. And then those nasty creeping things, and the earwigs! I really believe that one of them crawling into my head, would be enough to drive out all my intellects!"

Beyond question, madam.

"I did once see a Lady gardening, and it struck me with horror ! How she endured that odious caterpillar on her clothes without screaming, surpasses my comprehension. No,

no

it is not Lady's work, and I should say not even Gentleman's, though some profess to be very fond of it.”

Why as to that, madam, there is a style of gardening that might even be called aristocratical, and might be indulged in by the very first Exquisite in your own circle.

Indeed, sir?”

Yes, in the mode, madam, that was practised in his own garden by the Poet Thomson, the Author of the "Seasons." "And pray how was that, sir?

Why by eating the peaches off the wall, with his hands in his pockets; or in other words, gobbling up the fruits of industry, without sharing in the labor of production.

"Ŏ, fie! that's Radical! What do you say, my Lord?" "Why, 'pon honor, your ladyship, it does n't touch me

for I only eat other people's peaches my hands in my pockets at all."

CHAPTER X.

and without putting

"But do you really think, sir," asks Chronic Hypochondriasis," that gardening is such a healthy occupation?"

"I do. But better than my own opinion, I will give you the sentiments of a celebrated but eccentric Physician on the subject, when he was consulted by a Patient afflicted with your own disease.

“Well, sir, what's the matter with you?" said the bluff Doctor.

"Why nothing particular, Doctor, if you mean any decided complaint. Only I can't eat, and I can't drink, and I can't sleep, and I can't walk in short, I can't enjoy anything except being completely miserable.”

It was a clear case of Hypochondriasis, and so the Physician merely laid down the ordinary sanitary rules.

"But you haven't prescribed, Doctor," objected the Patient. "You have n't told me what I am to take."

"Take exercise."

"Well, but in what shape, Doctor?

"In the shape of a spade.”

"What dig like a horse?”

"No-like a man.

"And no physic?

"No. You don't want draughts, or pills, or powders. Take a garden and a Sabine farm after it if you like." "But it is such hard work?”

"Phoo, phoo.

that's soft work

they're harder

Begin with crushing your caterpillars

enough. After that you can kill snails, and mind, before breakfast.”

"I shall never eat any!"

"Yes you will, when you have earned your grub. Or hoe, and rake, and make yourself useful on the face of the earth.” "But I get so soon fatigued."

"Yes, because you are never tired of being tired. Mere indolence. Commit yourself to hard labor. It's pleasanter than having it done by a Magistrate, and better in private grounds than on public ones."