at gusto would you have peddled your flaccid
flesh upon the city streets and offered your miserable dogsbody to the
reluctant use of undiscriminating customers. You are the paradigmatic
whore, Weener, and I weep for the physiological accident which condemns
you to sell your servility rather than your vulva. Ah, Weener, it
restores my faith in human depravity to have you around to attempt your
petty confidence tricks on me once more; I rejoice to find I had not
overestimated mankind as long as I can see one aspect of it embodied in
your 'homely face and bad complexion,' as the great Gilbert so mildly
put it. I shall give orders to triplelock the pettycash, to count the
stampmoney diligently, to watch all checks for inept forgery. Welcome
back to the _Intelligencer_ and be grateful for nature's mistakes, since
they afford you employment as well as existence.

"But enough of the friendly garrulousness of an old man whose powers are
failing. Remove your unwholesomelooking person from my sight and convey
the decrepit vehicle of your spirit to San Diego. It is but a gesture; I
expect no coherent words from your clogged and sputtery pen; but while I
am sufficiently like yourself to deceive the public into thinking you
have written what they read, I am not yet great enough scoundrel to do
so without your visiting the scene of your presumed labors. Go--and do
not stop on the way to draw expensemoney from the cashier for she has
strict orders not to pay it."

Jealousy, nothing but jealousy, I thought, first of my literary ability
and now of my independence of his crazy whims. I turned my back
deliberately and walked slowly out, to show my contempt for his
rantings.

In my heart, now, there was little doubt the new grass was an extension
of the old and it didnt take more than a single look at the overrun park
to confirm this. The same creeping runners growing perceptibly from
instant to instant, the same brilliant color, the same towering central
mass gorged with food. I could have described it line by line and blade
by blade in my sleep. I wasted no more time gazing at it, but hurried
away after hardly more than a minute's inspection.

I could take no credit for my perceptivity since everyone in San Diego
knew as well as I that this was no duplicate freak, but the same, the
identical, the fearsome grass. But a quite understandable conspiracy had
been tacitly entered into; the knowledge was successfully hushed until
property c