al
knowledge; but he was rather surprised one day when Mr. O'Rourke pointed
to the triangular bed of lilies-of-the-valley, then out of flower, and
remarked, "Thim 's a nate lot o' pur-taties ye 've got there, sur." Mr.
Bilkins, we repeat, did not expect much from Mr. O'Rourke's skill in
gardening; his purpose was to reform the fellow if possible, and in any
case to make Margaret's lot easier.

Reestablished in her old home, Margaret broke into song again, and
Mr. O'Rourke himself promised to do very well; morally, we mean, not
agriculturally. His ignorance of the simplest laws of nature, if nature
has any simple laws, and his dense stupidity on every other subject
were heavy trials to Mr. Bilkins. Happily, Mr. Bilkins was not without
a sense of humor, else he would have found Mr. O'Rourke insupportable.
Just when the old gentleman's patience was about exhausted, the gardener
would commit some atrocity so perfectly comical that his master all but
loved him for the moment.

"Larry," said Mr. Bilkins, one breathless afternoon in the middle of
September, "just see how the thermometer on the back porch stands."

Mr. O'Rourke disappeared, and after a prolonged absence returned with
the monstrous announcement that the thermometer stood at 820!

Mr. Bilkins looked at the man closely. He was unmistakably sober.

"Eight hundred and twenty what?" cried Mr. Bilkins, feeling very warm,
as he naturally would in so high a temperature.

"Eight hundthred an' twinty degrays, I suppose, sur."

"Larry, you 're an idiot."

This was obviously not to Mr. O'Rourke's taste; for he went out and
brought the thermometer, and, pointing triumphantly to the line of
numerals running parallel with the glass tube, exclaimed, "Add 'em up
yerself, thin!"

Perhaps this would not have been amusing if Mr. Bilkins had not spent
the greater part of the previous forenoon in initiating Mr. O'Rourke
into the mysteries of the thermometer. Nothing could make amusing Mr.
O'Rourke's method of setting out crocus bulbs. Mr. Bilkins had received
a lot of a very choice variety from Boston, and having a headache that
morning, turned over to Mr. O'Rourke the duty of planting them. Though
he had never seen a bulb in his life, Larry unblushingly asserted that
he had set out thousands for Sir Lucius O'Grady of O'Grady Castle,
"an illegant place intirely, wid tin miles o' garden-walks," added
Mr. O'Rourke, crushing Mr. Bilkins, who boasted only of a few humble
flowe