252
WYLDER'S HAJVD.
low tones, which to her ear always bore a suspicion of
mockery in them, " how pretty you contrive to make this
bright little garden at all times of the year — you have
such lots of those evergreens, and ivy, and those odd flow-
ers."
"They call them immortelles in France," said Rachel,
in a cold strange tone, "and make chaplets of them to lay
upon the coffin-lids and the graves."
"Ah, yes, to be sure, I have seen them there and in
Pere la Chaise — so they do; they have them in all the
cemeteries — I forgot that. How cheerful; how very
sensible. Don't you think it would be a good plan to stick
up a death's-head and cross-bones here and there, and to
split up old coffin-lids for your setting-sticks, and get old
Mowlders, the sexton, to bury your roots, and cover them
in with a " dust to dust," and so forth, and plant a yew tree
in the middle, and stick those bits of painted,board, that look
so woefully like gravestones, all round it, and then let old
Tamar prowl about for a ghost. I assure you, Radie, I
think you, all to nothing, the perversest fool I ever en-
countered or heard of in the course of my life."
"Well, Stanley, suppose you do, I'll not dispute it.
Perhaps you are right/' said Rachel, still standing at the
door of her little porch.
"Perhaps," he repeated with a sneer; "I venture to
say, most positively, I can't conceive any sane reason for
your refusing Dorcas's entreaty to live with us at Brandon,
and leave this triste, and unwholesome, and everyway
objectionable place."
"She was very kind, but I can't do it."
"Yes, you can't do it, simply because it would be pre-
cisely the most sensible, prudent, and comfortable arrange-
ment you could possibly make; you won't do it — but
you can and will practise all the airs and fooleries of a