'wandering,' as he put it, 'into the shrubbery,'
and feast his eyes on a domain which extended not only further than
the arm could stretch, but even a little further than the eye could
reach.

"In the space, then, intervening between the laurels and the terminal
wall my father dug a grave two spits deep and interred the corpse,
covering it with a light compost of loam and leaf-mould. This was on
a Wednesday--the second Wednesday in July, as he was always
particular to mention. (And I have heard him tell the story a score
of times.)

"On the Sunday week, at half-past three in the afternoon, my father
had finished his pipe and was laying it down, before covering his
head (as his custom was) with a silk handkerchief to protect his
slumber from the flies, when, happening to glance towards the
shrubbery, he espied a remarkably fine crimson hollyhock overtopping
the laurels. He rubbed his eyes. He had invested in past years many
a shilling in hollyhock seed, but never till now had a plant bloomed
in his garden.

"He rubbed his eyes, I say. But there stood the hollyhock.
He rushed from the room, through the back-doorway and down the
garden. My excellent mother, aroused from her siesta by the slamming
of the door, dropped the Family Bible from her lap, and tottered in
pursuit. She found my father at the angle of the shrubbery, at a
standstill before a tangled mass of vegetation. Hollyhocks,
sunflowers, larkspurs, lilies, carnations, stocks--every bulb, every
seed which the dead man had failed to cultivate--were ramping now and
climbing from his grave high into the light. My father tore his way
through the thicket to the tool-shed, dragged forth a hook and
positively hacked a path back to my mother, barely in time to release
her from the coils of a major convolvulus (_ipomoea purpurea) which
had her fast by the ankles.

"Now, this story, which my father used to tell modestly enough, to
account for his success at our local flower-shows, seems to me to
hold a deeper significance, and a moral which I will not insult your
intelligence by extracting for you . . . The _actions_ of the just?
Foh!" continued Mr. Fett, and filled his mouth with melon.
"What about their _passions?_ Why, sir, yet another story occurs to
me, which might pass for an express epologue upon your father's
career. Did you never hear tell of the Grand Duchess Sophia of
Carinthia and her Three Wooers?"

"Pardon me, Mr. Fett--" I began.

"Pardon