“Ha, ha, good again! House in an orchard! yes, I see. Corklemore, hear that, my boy? Our admirable host—no, thank you, not a single drop more wine—I always know when I have had enough. Sir, it is the proud privi—prilivege of a man——Corklemore, get up, sir; donʼt you see we are waiting for you”? Mr. Corklemore stared heavily at him; his constitution was a sleepy one, and he thought he had eaten his dinner. His friend nodded gravely at Dr. Hutton; and the nod expressed compassion tempering condemnation. “Ah, I see how it is. Ever since that fall from the hayrick, the leastest little drop of wine, prej—prej——” “Prejudge the case, my lord”, muttered Mr. Corklemore, who had been a barrister. “Prejudicially affects our highly admired friend. But, sir, the fault is mine. I should have stretched forth long ago the restraining hand of friendship, sir, and dashed the si—si—silent bottle——” “Chirping bottle, possibly you mean”. “No, sir, I do not, and I will thank you not to interrupt me. Who ever heard a bottle chirp? I ask you, sir, as a man of the world, and a man of common sense, who ever heard a bottle chirp? What I mean, sir, is the siren—the siren bottle from his lips. What is it in the Latin grammar—or possibly in the Greek, for I have learned Greek, sir, in the faulchion days of youth;—is it not, sir, this: _improba Siren desidia_? Perhaps, sir, it may have been in your grammar, if you ever had one, _improba chirping desidia_”. As he looked round, in the glow and sparkle of lagenic logic, Rufus caught him by the arm, and hurried him out at the garden door, where luckily no steps were. The pair went straight, or, in better truth, went first, to the kitchen garden; Rufus did not care much for flowers; all that he left to his Rosa. “Now I will show you a thing, sir”, cried Rufus in his glory, “a thing which has been admired by the leading men of the age. Nowhere else, in this part of the world, can you see a piece of ground, sir, cropped in the manner of that, sir”. And to tell the plain, unvinous truth, the square to which he pointed was a triumph of high art. The style of it was wholly different from that of Mr. Garnetʼs beds. Bull Garnet was fond of novelties, but he made them square with his system; the result was more strictly practical, but less nobly theoretical. Dr. Hutton, on the other hand, travelled the entire porker; obstacles of soil and season were as nothing to him, and when the shape of the ground was wrong, he called in the navvies and made it right.