“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 flower-beds. The following day he stepped into the garden to see how Larry had done his work. There stood the parched bulbs, carefully arranged in circles and squares on top of the soil. “Did n't I tell you to set out these bulbs?” cried Mr. Bilkins, wrathfully. “An' did n't I set 'em out?” expostulated Mr. O'Rourke. “An' ain't they a settin' there beautiful?” “But you should have put them into the ground, stupid!” “Is it bury 'em, ye mane? Be jabbers! how could they iver git out agin? Give the little jokers a fair show, Misther Bilkins!” For two weeks Mr. O'Rourke conducted himself with comparative propriety; that is to say, be rendered himself useless about the place, appeared regularly at his meals, and kept sober. Perhaps the hilarious strains of music which sometimes issued at midnight from the upper window of the north gable were not just what a quiet, unostentatious family would desire; but on the whole there was not much to complain of.