THE SIX OF SPADES. 57 



fair lady, were some disagreeable miscreant to intrude 

 upon the privacy of your bright little boudoir, and to 

 extract the tail of your piping bul finch ? And yon, 

 my brave gentleman, would your observations be 

 entirely such as your pastor would approve, were you 

 to hear from your groom that some coarse-minded 

 person had paid your stables a visit during the 

 night, and " gone the whole hog" with your hunters' 

 maucs ? 



There is provocation, I must allow, sometime?. 

 There are Spades in the floricultural pack, though 

 not in our company (limited), so mean as to the 

 amount, and so sulky as to the manner, of their 

 donations, that their scared employers dare not, 

 finally, ask for a single petal, and so are led to adopt 

 the facile alternative of freely helping themselves. 



But how comes it, the question ma/y arise, that the 

 young Oxonian, of whom we heard just now as at 

 fierce war with gardeners, and as cutting and maim- 

 ing the plants around him. w T ith so much brutal 

 stolidit} r , how comes it tbat he has suddenly put off the 

 paraphernalia of battle for the peaceful apron of the 

 florist, and changed his sword into a pruning-knife ? 



Of this transformation, the happiest event of my 

 life, I must speak hereafter; appropriately, I think, 

 in a little lecture upon roses, which I am preparing 

 at the request of " The Six of Spades ; " but I must 

 first introduce you to the rest of our brotherhood ; 

 and now, if you please, to that quaint, hearty, 

 honest, hard-working, plain-speaking fellow, Joseph 

 Grundy, head-gardener, coachman, &c., &c., to the 

 good old ladies at the Grange. 



