“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!”