y a day
sooner than we expected, and the pig-killer is coming presently to cut
up.'

Mrs. Barbara Worm, not wishing to take any mean advantage of persons
in a muddle by observing them, removed her bonnet and mantle with eyes
fixed upon the flowers in the plot outside the door.

'What beautiful tiger-lilies!' said Mrs. Worm.

'Yes, they be very well, but such a trouble to me on account of the
children that come here. They will go eating the berries on the stem,
and call 'em currants. Taste wi' junivals is quite fancy, really.'

'And your snapdragons look as fierce as ever.'

'Well, really,' answered Mrs. Smith, entering didactically into the
subject, 'they are more like Christians than flowers. But they make up
well enough wi' the rest, and don't require much tending. And the same
can be said o' these miller's wheels. 'Tis a flower I like very much,
though so simple. John says he never cares about the flowers o' 'em,
but men have no eye for anything neat. He says his favourite flower is
a cauliflower. And I assure you I tremble in the springtime, for 'tis
perfect murder.'

'You don't say so, Mrs. Smith!'

'John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade,
through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn't got a good show above
ground, turning 'em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went
to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the stems
crooked round. He had turned 'em over in the spring, and the cunning
creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it used to be.'

'What's that long-favoured flower under the hedge?'

'They? O Lord, they are the horrid Jacob's ladders! Instead of praising
'em, I be mad wi' 'em for being so ready to bide where they are not
wanted. They be very well in their way, but I do not care for things
that neglect won't kill. Do what I will, dig, drag, scrap, pull, I get
too many of 'em. I chop the roots: up they'll come, treble strong. Throw
'em over hedge; there they'll grow, staring me in the face like a hungry
dog driven away, and creep back again in a week or two the same as
before. 'Tis Jacob's ladder here, Jacob's ladder there, and plant 'em
where nothing in the world will grow, you get crowds of 'em in a month
or two. John made a new manure mixen last summer, and he said, "Maria,
now if you've got any flowers or such like, that you don't want, you may
plant 'em round my mixen so as to hide it a bit, though 'tis not likely
anything o