inquired: “Your task?”      

       “Weedin',” said Frederick.     

       “Weeding what?”      

       “Weeds,” Frederick told him, a little surprised.     

       Mr. Marrapit rapped sharply: “Say 'sir'.”      

       “Sir,” said Frederick, making to move.     

       Mr. Marrapit peered at the basket. “You have remarkably few.”      

       “There ain't never many,” Frederick said with quiet pride—“there ain't never many if you keep 'em down by always doin' your job.”      

       Mr. Marrapit pointed: “They grow thick at your feet, sir!”      

       In round-eyed astonishment Frederick peered low. “They spring up the minute your back's turned, them weeds. They want a weed destroyer what you       pours out of a can.”      

       “You are the weed-destroyer,” Mr. Marrapit said sternly. “Be careful. It is very true that they spring up whenever my back is turned. Be careful.” He passed on.     

       “Blarst yer back,” murmured Frederick, bending his own to the task.     

       IV.     

       A few yards further Mr. Marrapit again paused. Against a laurel bush stood a pair of human legs, the seat of whose encasing trousers stared gloomily upwards at the sky. With a small twig he carried Mr. Marrapit tapped the seat. Three or four raps were necessary; slowly it straightened into line with the legs; from the abyss of the bush a back, shoulders, head, appeared.     

       Just as the ostrich with buried head believes itself hid from observation, so it was with Mr. Fletcher, needing peace, a habit to plunge head and shoulders into a bush and there remain—showing nothing against the sky-line. Long practice had freed the posture from irksomeness. As a young man Mr. Fletcher had been employed in a public tennis-court, and there had learned the little mannerism to 

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