d over.

Any man or woman with a pennyworth of brains, or the like precious
amount of personal experience, or who has read a novel before, must,
when Harry pulled out those faded vegetables just now, have gone off
into a digression of his own, as the writer confesses for himself he was
diverging whilst he has been writing the last brace of paragraphs. If he
sees a pair of lovers whispering in a garden alley or the embrasure of
a window, or a pair of glances shot across the room from Jenny to the
artless Jessamy, he falls to musing on former days when, etc. etc. These
things follow each other by a general law, which is not as old as the
hills, to be sure, but as old as the people who walk up and down them.
When, I say, a lad pulls a bunch of amputated and now decomposing greens
from his breast and falls to kissing it, what is the use of saying much
more? As well tell the market-gardener's name from whom the slip-rose
was bought--the waterings, clippings, trimmings, manurings, the plant
has undergone--as tell how Harry Warrington came by it. Rose, elle a
vecu la vie des roses, has been trimmed, has been watered, has been
potted, has been sticked, has been cut, worn, given away, transferred
to yonder boy's pocket-book and bosom, according to the laws and fate
appertaining to roses.

And how came Maria to give it to Harry? And how did he come to want it
and to prize it so passionately when he got the bit of rubbish? Is not
one story as stale as the other? Are not they all alike? What is the
use, I say, of telling them over and over? Harry values that rose
because Maria has ogled him in the old way; because she has happened to
meet him in the garden in the old way; because he has taken her hand in
the old way; because they have whispered to one another behind the old
curtain (the gaping old rag, as if everybody could not peep through
it!); because, in this delicious weather, they have happened to be early
risers and go into the park; because dear Goody Jenkins in the village
happened to have a bad knee, and my lady Maria went to read to her, and
gave her calves'-foot jelly, and because somebody, of course, must carry
the basket. Whole chapters might have been written to chronicle
all these circumstances, but A quoi bon? The incidents of life, and
love-making especially, I believe to resemble each other so much, that
I am surprised, gentlemen and ladies, you read novels any more. Psha! Of
course that rose in young Harry's po