to like a grammarschool class. Still, I
humored her. "Why, then he has only one leg," I answered agreeably if
idiotically.

"True. More than that, he has a onelegged disposition. His whole ego,
his entire spirit is changed. No longer a twolegged creature, reduced,
he is another--warped, if you like--being. To come to the immediate
point of the grass: if you engender an omnivorous capacity you implant
an insatiable appetite."

"I don't catch."

"If you give a man a big belly you make him a hog."

A chevvy coupe, gently breathing steam from its radiator cap,
interrupted. From its turtle hung the blade of a scythe and on the
nervously hinged door had been hopefully lettered _Arcangelo Barelli,
Plowing & Grading_.

While the coupe was trembling for some seconds before quieting down, I
sighed a double relief, at Miss Francis' forgetfulness of the money due
her and the soothing of my fears for the lawn's eating its way downward
to China or India. The remark about gluttonous abdomens was disturbing.

"And of course there will be no further sale of the Metamorphizer," she
concluded, her eyes now totally concerned with the farmer who was
opening the turtle with the air of a man expecting to be unpleasantly
astonished.

Mr Barelli came as to a deathbed, a consoling but hopeless smile
widening his narrow face only inconsiderably. At the scythe cradled in
his arms someone shouted, "Here's old Father Time himself." Mr Barelli
wasnt amused. Brushing his forehead thoughtfully with tender fingers he
surveyed with saddened eye the three graduated steps of grass. The last
step, unessayed by his predecessors, rose nearly four feet, as alien to
the concept of lawn as a field of wheat.

"Think you can cut it?" one of the audience asked.

Mr Barelli smiled cheerlessly and didnt answer. Instead, he uprooted
from his hip pocket a slender stone and began phlegmatically to caress
the blade of the scythe with it.

"Hay, that stuff's not goin to stop growin while you fool around."

"Got to do things right," explained Mr Barelli gently.

The rhythmic friction of stone against steel prolonged suspense
unbearably. All kinds of speculation crowded my mind while the leisurely
performance went on. The grass was growing rapidly; faster than
vegetation had ever grown before. Could it grow so quickly the farmer's
scythe couldnt keep up with it? Suppose it had been wheat or corn?
Planted today, it would be ready to harvest next week, fully ri