plants in pots. Look at these geraniums! Now, I consider that pink one a perfect bloom;
yes, a perfect bloom. This is a fine red one, is it not, miss? Especially fine, don't you
think? The trouble with the red variety is that they're apt to get "bobby" and have to be
washed regularly; quite bobby they do get indeed, I assure you. That white one has just
gone out of blossom, and it was really wonderful. You could 'ardly have told it from a
paper flower, miss, not from a white paper flower. My plants are my children nowadays,
since Albert Edward is my only care. I have been the mother of eleven children, miss, all
of them living, so far as I know; I know nothing to the contrary. I 'ope you are not
wearying of this solitary place, miss? It will grow upon you, I am sure, as it did upon
Mrs. Pollock, with all her peculiar fancies, and as it 'as grown upon us.--We formerly had
a butcher's shop in Buffington, and it was naturally a great responsibility. Mr. Heaven's
nerves are not strong, and at last he wanted a life of more quietude, more quietude was
what he craved. The life of a retail butcher is a most exciting and wearying one. Nobody
satisfied with their meat; as if it mattered in a world of change! Everybody complaining
of too much bone or too little fat; nobody wishing tough chops or cutlets, but always
seeking after fine joints, when it's against reason and nature that all joints should be juicy
and all cutlets tender; always complaining if livers are not sent with every fowl, always
asking you to remember the trimmin's, always wanting their beef well 'ung, and then if
you 'ang it a minute too long, it's left on your 'ands! I often used to say to Mr. Heaven,
yes many's the time I've said it, that if people would think more of the great 'ereafter and
less about their own little stomachs, it would be a deal better for them, yes, a deal better,
and make it much more comfortable for the butchers!"
Burd Alane has had a good quarter of an hour to-day.
His spouse took a brief promenade with him. To be sure, it was during an absence of the
flock on the other side of the hedge so that the moral effect of her spasm of wifely loyalty
was quite lost upon them. I strongly suspect that she would not have granted anything but
a secret interview. What a petty, weak, ignoble character! I really don't like to think so
badly of any fellow- creature as I am forced to think of that politic, time-serving,
pusillanimous goose. I believe she laid the egg that produced the idiot gosling!
