Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/470

 12, 1860.] well I recollect the look of satisfaction with which he used to regard the work of his hands as, sitting in his easy chair on a summer’s Sunday evening, he would slowly puff his after-dinner pipe (he was a widower), while drawing the attention of some friend to the peculiarities of certain cuttings, and the various beauties of his favourite shrubs.

“His companion on one of these occasions was a Mr. Tibbs, a thorough Cockney, with about as much idea of country life and agricultural pursuits as a fish has of nut-cracking. He was a tradesman in the city, had risen to the rank of alderman, and was now within no very great distance of the mayoralty. This ‘achievement of greatness,’ though adding somewhat to his natural pomposity, had in no way diminished his innate relish for a joke. His fun certainly was not refined, nor his raillery elegant; but, as he used to say, ‘a joke’s a joke,’ and undoubtedly Mr. Tibbs’s jokes were peculiarly his own, and no one, I’m sure, would ever think of claiming them.

‘How’s Polly Hanthus?’ was his invariable greeting on entering our house. After the delivery of which facetious allusion to my father, he would indulge in chuckles of some seconds’ duration.

‘Well,’ said he, when my father had finished a long disquisition on the merits of a splendid chrysanthemum, ‘well, Lorquison, I don’t know much about your kissymythumbs, which is Latin or Greek, or—something or other,’ he added after a pause, feeling rather out of his element in an etymological question; ‘but I’ll send you a seed or two, the like of which you’ve never come across, my boy.’ Here, taking his pipe from his mouth, he wagged his head in a fat and happy manner.

‘And what may they be?’ asked my father, with much interest.

‘Well, they may be anything,’ replied Tibbs, with an inward chuckle at his own wit; ‘but they happen to be seeds. Lor’ bless you, I ain’t a-going to tell you what they are. But they’re rare—very rare. Such a gardener’ (he pronounced it gardinger) ‘as you ought to tell what the plant is when you looks at the seed. For my part, I don’t pretend to call ’em any grand name—it’s a very short ’un. Will you have ’em?’

‘Delighted!’ answered my father, ‘send them as soon as possible; and I don’t doubt but we shall be able to get up a curious paper on the subject in the “Gardeners’ Magazine. ’

‘Very good; then mind you take care in planting of ’em, Lorquison, ’cos they’ve never been sown afore in this country.’

“Here Mr. Tibbs was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which, although he attributed it to the evening air, or the smoke going ‘the wrong way,’ my young eyes detected as the effect caused by a series of suppressed chuckles. My father, elated with the idea of his new acquisition, did not remark this.

‘Here’s my coach,’ said Tibbs, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

‘Don’t forget the seeds,’ were my father’s last words as his guest departed.

“I believe my father scarcely slept all that night: he was never a sluggard, but on that Monday morning he was up earlier than ever, and working in his garden with a diligence worthy of ‘The old Corycian.’ He was clearing out a space of ground for the reception of the promised seeds.

“During breakfast he was in a perpetual state of fidget; the postman was late—stay—would it come by post—no, by carrier. At last, however, the postman did arrive, and delivered into my father’s hands, ready at the front gate to receive him, a small packet with a letter from Tibbs, containing an apology for having sent only twenty seeds, and pleading their value as his excuse.

“These twenty little wonders were quite round and very small, being, as it appeared to us, of a dark red colour.

“My father inspected them, and looked puzzled; smelt them, and said ‘humph!’ That ‘humph’ was portentous; even the stolid Tibbs would cease his chuckle at my father’s ‘humph!’

“Perhaps you know that all gardeners examine with a glass, and taste their seeds; my father was now about to go through this double process. He looked at them through his powerful microscope.

‘Why, surely—’ said my father, and took another survey. Something was wrong. ‘I do believe—’ he began, and then followed the trial by tasting. He smacked his lips and clicked his tongue against his palate—frowned—spat out the seed—bent down his head to the microscope, and then exclaimed: ‘Confound that Tibbs!’ I waited anxiously for what was to follow. ‘Seeds! Why he’s sent me the dried roe of a herring!’

“I recollect how amused I was, as a child, at this practical joke of Tibbs’s. My father laughed heartily in spite of his vexation, and folding up the packet previous to putting it away in his private drawer, said quietly, ‘Very well, Mr. Tibbs,’ by which I knew that he intended to repay our Cockney friend in his own coin. He wrote, however, thanking Tibbs for his present, and that little gentleman, I have no doubt, retailed the joke to many a friend on ’Change, and began to look upon himself as the Hook of private life.

“But they laugh longest who laugh last.

“Three weeks after this, Tibbs met my father one Saturday afternoon in the City.

‘How’s Polly Hanthus?’ inquired Tibbs.

‘Well, thank you,’ replied my father. ‘Will you dine with me to-morrow?’

“Tibbs was not the man to refuse a good offer.

‘By the way,’ he slily asked, almost bursting with chuckles, ‘how about those seeds, eh?’

‘What seeds?’ asked my father, with an air of utter ignorance.

‘Oh, that won’t do!’ returned Tibbs. ‘I say, are they growing? ’Twan’t bad, was it?

“My father’s serious face prevented a burst of laughter in which his friend was about to indulge.

‘If you mean those seeds which you sent to me as a curiosity three weeks ago, I can only say, that they’re getting on capitally.’

‘Hey! what?’ exclaimed the alderman.

‘Well! I grant you that it is a lusus naturæ.’

‘O, indeed!’ said Tibbs, thinking that this might be the horticiultural Latin for a herring.

‘But come to-morrow, and you’ll see them yourself. Good bye!’

‘Very curious—very!’ murmured the bewildered Tibbs to himself, as my father hurried off.