A Rivermouth Romance | Page 7

ankle, or a bruised shoulder, or a broken head. He had
broken most of the furniture in his festive hours, including the
cooking-stove. "In short," as Mr. Bilkins said in relating the matter
afterwards to Mrs. Bilkins, "he had broken all those things which he
should n't have broken, and failed to break the one thing he ought to
have broken long ago--his neck, namely."
The revelation which startled Mr. Bilkins most was this: in spite of all,
Margaret loved Larry with the whole of her warm Irish heart. Further
than keeping the poor creature up waiting for him until ever so much

o'clock at night, it did not appear that he treated her with personal
cruelty. If he had beaten her, perhaps she would have worshipped him.
It needed only that.
Revolving Margaret's troubles in his thoughts as he walked homeward,
Mr. Bilkins struck upon a plan by which he could help her. When this
plan was laid before Mrs. Bilkins, she opposed it with a vehemence that
convinced him she had made up her mind to adopt it.
"Never, never will I have that ungrateful woman under this roof!" cried
Mrs. Bilkins; and accordingly the next day Mr. and Mrs. O'Rourke took
up their abode in the Bilkins mansion--Margaret as cook, and Larry as
gardener.
"I 'm convanient if the owld gintleman is," had been Mr. O'Rourke's
remark, when the proposition was submitted to him. Not that Mr.
O'Rourke had the faintest idea of gardening. He did n't know a tulip
from a tomato. He was one of those sanguine people who never hesitate
to undertake anything, and are never abashed by their herculean
inability.
Mr. Bilkins did not look to Margaret's husband for any great botanical
knowledge; but he was rather surprised one day when Mr. O'Rourke
pointed to the triangular bed of lilies-of-the-valley, then out of flower,
and remarked, "Thim 's a nate lot o' pur-taties ye 've got there, sur." Mr.
Bilkins, we repeat, did not expect much from Mr. O'Rourke's skill in
gardening; his purpose was to reform the fellow if possible, and in any
case to make Margaret's lot easier.
Reestablished in her old home, Margaret broke into song again, and Mr.
O'Rourke himself promised to do very well; morally, we mean, not
agriculturally. His ignorance of the simplest laws of nature, if nature
has any simple laws, and his dense stupidity on every other subject
were heavy trials to Mr. Bilkins. Happily, Mr. Bilkins was not without
a sense of humor, else he would have found Mr. O'Rourke
insupportable. Just when the old gentleman's patience was about
exhausted, the gardener would commit some atrocity so perfectly
comical that his master all but loved him for the moment.

"Larry," said Mr. Bilkins, one breathless afternoon in the middle of
September, "just see how the thermometer on the back porch stands."
Mr. O'Rourke disappeared, and after a prolonged absence returned with
the monstrous announcement that the thermometer stood at 820!
Mr. Bilkins looked at the man closely. He was unmistakably sober.
"Eight hundred and twenty what?" cried Mr. Bilkins, feeling very warm,
as he naturally would in so high a temperature.
"Eight hundthred an' twinty degrays, I suppose, sur."
"Larry, you 're an idiot."
This was obviously not to Mr. O'Rourke's taste; for he went out and
brought the thermometer, and, pointing triumphantly to the line of
numerals running parallel with the glass tube, exclaimed, "Add 'em up
yerself, thin!"
Perhaps this would not have been amusing if Mr. Bilkins had not spent
the greater part of the previous forenoon in initiating Mr. O'Rourke into
the mysteries of the thermometer. Nothing could make amusing Mr.
O'Rourke's method of setting out crocus bulbs. Mr. Bilkins had
received a lot of a very choice variety from Boston, and having a
headache that morning, turned over to Mr. O'Rourke the duty of
planting them. Though he had never seen a bulb in his life, Larry
unblushingly asserted that he had set out thousands for Sir Lucius
O'Grady of O'Grady Castle, "an illegant place intirely, wid tin miles o'
garden-walks," added Mr. O'Rourke, crushing Mr. Bilkins, who
boasted only of a few humble flower-beds.
The following day he stepped into the garden to see how Larry had
done his work. There stood the parched bulbs, carefully arranged in
circles and squares on top of the soil.
"Did n't I tell you to set out these bulbs?" cried Mr. Bilkins, wrathfully.

"An' did n't I set 'em out?" expostulated Mr. O'Rourke. "An' ain't they a
settin' there beautiful?"
"But you should have put them into the ground, stupid!"
"Is it bury 'em, ye mane? Be jabbers! how could they iver git out agin?
Give the little jokers a fair show, Misther Bilkins!"
For two weeks Mr. O'Rourke conducted himself with comparative
propriety;