any as twenty milk-pans have stood
together over the fire, that the visitors might have clotted cream to eat
with their strawberries and raspberries. In the orchards, from under
masses of traveller's joy, you may pull away rotten pieces of timber that
once made arbours and summer-houses.

The present tenant will sub-let you the whole of Merry-Garden, if you
wish, for two pounds ten shillings per annum. He is an old man, with an
amazing memory and about as much sentiment as my boot. From him I learned
the following story: and, with your leave, I will repeat it in his words.

I.

Aunt Barbree Furnace was a widow woman, and held Merry-Garden upon a
tenancy of a kind you don't often come across nowadays--and good riddance
to it!--though common enough when I was a boy. The whole lease was but
for three pounds a year for the term of three lives--her husband, William
John Furnace; her husband's younger sister Tryphena, that had married a
man called Jewell and buried him within six months; and Tryphena's only
child Ferdinando, otherwise known as Nandy. When the lease was drawn, all
three lives seemed good enough for another fifty years. The Furnaces came
of a long-lived stock, and William John with any ordinary care might hope
to reach eighty. His sister had been specially put into the lease on the
strength of her constitution; and six months of married life had given her
a distaste for it, which made things all the safer. As for Nandy, there's
always a risk, of course, with very young lives, 'specially with boys:
but if he did happen to pull through, 'twas like as not he might lengthen
out the lease for another thirty years.

At any rate Mr. and Mrs. Furnace took the risk with a cheerful mind.
The woman came from Saltash, where she and her mother had driven a
thriving trade in cockles and other shellfish, particularly with the Royal
Marines; and being a busy spirit and childless, she hit on the notion of
turning her old trade to account. Her husband, William John, had tilled
Merry-Garden and stocked it with fruits and sallets with no eye but to the
sale of them in Saltash market. But the house was handy for
pleasure-takers by water, and by and by the board she put up--
_Mrs. Barbree Furnace. Cockles and Cream in Season. Water Boiled and Tea
if You Wish_--attracted the picnickers by scores; and the picnickers began
to ask for fruit with their teas, till William John, at his wife's advice,
planted half an acre