They advanced towards the bed of sprouts.
THE INNOCENT LADY.
The paragon took no notice whatever of their approach. With an immovable countenance and half-shut eyes, he continued to job his spade into the mould, lift it out, throw the excavated earth to either side of him, knock any lumps that there chanced to be to pieces, level the surface, and job the spade in again with mechanical regularity, while Mr. Minnidick hoed in silence at his side, munching the air without cessation. Beyond the hedge the boy with the sharply-pointed nose lay back in the basket-work chaise wrapped in a seraph's slumber, while the white pony nibbled hedgerow grass contentedly in the sunshine. It was upon this exquisitely peaceful and divinely rustic scene that the ruthless Duke now murderously advanced, carrying a hoe in each hand, and attended by the agitated owner of Mitching Dean, who endeavoured to assume the expression of a fanatic, while his gait suggested abject fear tempered by creeping paralysis. Such, however, is the influence of supreme intrepidity upon the soul of man, that even the Duke stopped short on arriving at the sprouts, and gazed for a moment in astonished silence at Mrs. Verulam's idea of Agag thus pursuing the chosen vocation of his existence upon the very edge of the tomb. The rattle of the falling earth would have recalled to a coward soul the sad music that accompanies the burial of even the bravest. But Mr. Bush's nerves were surely made of steel. He did not glance aside. He did not flutter so much as an eyelid, conscious though he was of the Duchess crouching among his mushrooms, and of the infuriated husband waiting for him with the most formidable hoe that the resources of the Elephant and Drum could afford. In fact, he rather suggested an unusually heavy and lethargic person on the verge of slumber than a desperate Don Juan on the point of being slain in a duel.
"Don't you think," whispered Mr. Rodney in the Duke's ear—"don't you think you'd better put it off for a few hours? It seems almost—almost indecent to—to kill a man when—when he's laying out his—his garden."
"I intend to lay him out," returned the Duke. "Mr. Bush!"
The paragon calmly dug on.
"Mr. Bush!" repeated the Duke in a very loud voice. "Are you deaf, sir?—are you deaf and blind, sir?"