GREAT EXPECTATIONS 121 



it for this that I had borne with calm disdain 

 paternal scoff, uxorial jeer, and neighborly gibe ? 



Then I went back and made an examination. 

 None, or at least very few, of them were broken. 

 I tried the experiment of straightening one plant 

 and heaping earth round it to keep it straight. 

 It was perfectly feasible. For an hour before tea, 

 and after tea until late at night, with lantern I 

 worked until every bent stalk was straightened. It 

 was fully a week after that when Daniel, the om- 

 niscient, informed me that the stalks would have 

 straightened out themselves. 



A day or two after, my friend Daniel called 

 to see Lady M. and to determine whether or not 

 it would be advisable to grant that blue-blooded 

 animal a long holiday in view of the great event 

 in her life, and, I also felt, in my fortune and 

 reputation as a stock-farmer. 



By his advice Lady M. was given a vacation 

 in the paddock, quite a pretentious name for an 

 open shed with a fifty-foot run. It seemed as 

 soon as she was turned into the lot that my ex- 

 pectations were almost realized. I am a little 

 given to building air-castles, and I must confess 

 that I looked forward to the possibility of breed- 

 ing the two-minute trotter. I realized the ex- 

 treme improbability of anything of the kind ever 

 happening to me, and yet it was a possibility. 

 Lady M. showed good breeding. There were 



