"Let's see where had I got to? Ah, I know. Most extinguished myself with them gold-band hats. You see, I was a saying as them gatekeepers is big swells, and wants careful handling. They're the sort of chaps that wun would like to buy at wun's own wallyation and sell at theirs. Payin' spec that to anybody; only I'm 'fraid as the market would soon get choked. Well, fust thing I does is to fall werry much in love with the flowers in his windy, and quite 'spectfully arsts the name of 'em; when, bein' a bit of a gardener, he comes out with some thunderin' great furrin word, as I knows jolly well he didn't know the meanin' on; and I says, `Oh!' as if I was werry much obliged, and takes hold o' one werry gently, and has a smell, and then thinks a great deal o' the size of the blossoms, and so on; till, as if it was takin' a great liberty, I arsts if he couldn't cut me just one. Jest what he wanted, yer know; and making a terrible fuss over it, and explaining the wally of the plant, he snips me off a bit, and I sticks it in my button-hole, while he looked as pleased as some o' those old buffers in white weskets as puts shillings in plates when there's a k'lection, and then thinks as they've been patrons: for some folks do love to be arskt favours, and then comes the grandee as they grants 'em. "So then I goes on a fishin' and a fishin', and calls him `sir,' and arsts his opinion of Common Garden, and so on, till at last I hooks him, and-- "Coo-o-ome orn! What are yer up to, Nosey? Never was such a 'oss as you for lookin' arter the main chance. That wasn't a sixpence, stoopid, and if it was I'd a got off and picked it up without yer going down on yer knees. Never was such a 'oss as this here, sir. He's a Paddy--come out of a Roman Catholic country, yer know; and blest if he ain't allus a tryin' to go down on his knees. Fancies every crossin'-sweeper he sees is a holy father, and wants to confess, I suppose. It's a natteral weakness of his, and it's taken all the hair off his knees. I paints 'em up a bit so as to hide the worst of it, but he's allus a tryin' it on. Get along, do. "Well, I hooks him, you know--the gatekeeper, I means--and arter playin' him a bit he was as civil as you please; gets down off his stilts, and was ready to tell me anything. So then I gets to know as my gentleman was an old colonel as had buried a daughter there two months afore, and had allus come twice a week ever since to have a look at the place. `An',' says Mr Crusp--that was the gatekeeper's name--`an', as you may find out yourself if you go, I've got geranums an' stocks, an' werbenas, quite a show on 'em, for the old gentleman said he should like to see some flowers there.' And just then out comes the old orficer, and I drives off. "Well, sir, things goes on like this here for a matter o' months, and--