THE SIX OF SPADES. 65 



elusion. ' Prettier than anything we've got,' he 

 grunted. ' If a man wants to know what a fool he is, 

 let him go and lay out a garden ! ' 



"And it is a comfort to feel that our old-fashioned 

 style evokes neither jealousies nor comparisons from 

 your anxious modern competitors. If the spirit of 

 any young gardener is troubled at the sight of some to 

 him unknown novelty, and envy with malignant glare 

 is eying it, as Greedy Dick the tartlets and pies, he 

 is at once appeased to hear that it has been with us 

 half a century, and is only annoyed with himself for 

 admiring anything so superannuated. No one points 

 out, with lively satisfaction to himself, those ' sad 

 mistakes in arrangement of colours,' which your 

 great artists are as prompt to see in others as they 

 are to overlook in their own parterres. We are never 

 told that our favourite plants are ' quite superseded, 

 and gone out of cultivation some years since ! ' And 

 nobody sneers at our boiler, for the simple reason that 

 we have no greenhouse. Ah ! I must tell you what 

 dear Mary said " (Miss Susan, you. must know, looks 

 upon Miss Mary as a combination of Sydney Smith 

 and Venus), " when Joseph expressed a wish, the 

 other day, that we would set up what he called ' a bit 

 of a Consartive-Tory.' ' Joseph,' she said, ' so far as 

 I am concerned, I feel more disposed, as I'm losing my 

 hair, to set up a bit of a Wig ! ' 



" And apropos of Grundy, what do you think that 

 delightful elephant did last evening ? We had a few 

 friends to dine with us, and it unfortunately devolved 

 upon Joseph to place a pyramid of jelly upon the 

 table. Carried unsteadily, it commenced, of course, 

 6 



