
FEBRUARY. 45 
the snoring of his small servant asleep in the contiguous kitchen) 
“‘ and the dismal drip of the rain” (here Miss Oldacres looked up into 
the cloudless shining heavens, as if wondering wherever the rain was to 
come from) ‘ he should sit, like patience on a monument, smiling at 
grief,”—the monument consisting of a very easy chair, and grief being 
represented by a plump little pipe of Bristol bird’s-eye, and a glass of 
gin and water, “ hot with.” Finally, this unhappy plaintiff, whom 
you could not have identified with the smiling skater, shooting over the 
lake only half an hour ago, as though he had backed himself to catch 
an express train, after glancing briefly at the delightful privileges of 
self-destruction, the repose to be found in Yellow Fever, and the un- 
speakable consolation of being killed in battle, in cases of severe disap- 
pointment, asked Mary Oldacres to be his wife; and I am quite sure 
that the bright moon, in all her great experience, never looked upon a 
happier couple as they came home, hand in hand, and heart in heart, 
that night, through the silvered grass. Mr. Chiswick returned to his 
‘‘ dreary cave,” and evoked unjust suspicions of his sobriety in the 
small servant, by informing her that ‘life was ecstacy, and he should 
raise her wages ;” and subsequently proceeded to evoke the sparrows 
resident in the creeping Roses outside, with ‘‘ Love’s Young Dream” 
from the cornet. 
You ask, perhaps, at this crisis, with the fast Oxonian in the song, 
** but what will the Old Governor say ?” and I must tell you, in answer, 
that the primary chilliness to which I alluded, soon thawed in the warm 
bosom of Mr. Oldacres, that he made an acquaintance, and then a 
friendship with Mr. Chiswick, and that Romeo knew, when he astonished 
the sparrows, that he had little to fear from Capulet. And this was so, 
because the younger man ever tendered to his senior that due respect 
and deference which is not quite so common in these days as it cer- 
tainly is just and seemly. Mr. Oldacres had expected to meet a super- 
cilious dandy, who would sneer at his superannuated notions, and would 
expatiate, in a language, half Latin and half science, upon the Meta- 
physics of Botany, or some pleasant little theme of that sort. He found, 
on the contrary, a quiet, unassuming, well informed man, clever, and 
highly educated in his art, but more anxious to listen than to speak, as 
one to whom knowledge was teaching her noblest lesson to be aware how 
little he knew. ‘‘ Mr. Oldacres,” he thought, ‘* has not had the great ad- 
vantages which were given to me in those dear old gardens of the Horti- 
cultural Society under the wise supervision of ‘ the Doctor,’ and yet 
how much have I to learn from one, who has spent a long life at work, 
at work upon the best material, and with.the most costly tools.” And 
the old man, seeing himself appreciated, was prompt on his part to 
acknowledge the acquirements of his new neighbour, to exchange in- 
formation, and to compare old things with new. I met him one 
morning, returning from the Hall gardens, and he informed me that 
«¢ Chiswick was a regular conjurer.’”’ He had just seen him ‘tie out” 
a young Pimelia, recently received from the nurseries, and he had made 
it look worth a guinea! And the best of it was,’’ he went on to say, 
“« that the fellow had no more pride about him than a Dahlia after a 
hard frost,” and when he praised his handiwork, he only said ‘ I wish 
99 
you saw William May’s. 
