g over the
baskets. I seem to have got circularly round again to Eden when I enter a
garden. Only, here we have to pay for the fruits we pluck. Well, and just
the same there; and no end to the payment either. We're always paying! By
the way, Mrs. Victor Radnor's dinner-table's a spectacle. Her taste in
flowers equals her lord's in wine. But age improves the wine and spoils
the flowers, you'll say. Maybe you're for arguing that lovely women show
us more of the flower than the grape, in relation to the course of time.
I pray you not to forget the terrible intoxicant she is. We reconcile it,
Mr. Carling, with the notion that the grape's her spirit, the flower her
body. Or is it the reverse? Perhaps an intertwining. But look upon
bouquets and clusters, and the idea of woman springs up at once, proving
she's composed of them. I was about to remark, that with deference to the
influence of Mrs. Burman's legal adviser, an impenitent or penitent
sinner's pastor, the Reverend gentleman ministering to her spiritual
needs, would presumptively exercise it, in this instance, in a superior
degree.'

Carling murmured: 'The Rev. Groseman Buttermore'; and did so for
something of a cover, to continue a run of internal reflections: as, that
he was assuredly listening to vinous talk in the streets by day; which
impression placed him on a decorous platform above the amusing gentleman;
to whom, however, he grew cordial, in recognizing consequently, that his
exuberant flow could hardly be a mask; and that an indication here and
there of a trap in his talk, must have been due rather to excess of
wariness, habitual in the mind of a long-headed man, whose incorrigibly
impulsive fits had necessarily to be rectified by a vigilant dexterity.

'Buttermore!' ejaculated Fenellan: 'Groseman Buttermore! Mrs.
Victor's Father Confessor is the Rev. Septimus Barmby. Groseman
Buttermore--Septimus Barmby. Is there anything in names? Truly, unless
these clerical gentlemen take them up at the crossing of the roads long
after birth, the names would appear the active parts of them, and
themselves mere marching supports, like the bearers of street
placard-advertisements. Now, I know a Septimus Barmby, and you a Groseman
Buttermore, and beyond the fact that Reverend starts up before their
names without mention, I wager it's about all we do know of them. They're
Society's trusty rock-limpets, no doubt.'

'My respect for the cloth is extreme.' Carling's short cough