He seemed to himself to be in a sort of insane fit, so that it did
not matter what he did--and he married the burglar to the cook.
The cook said that she would rather have had a solider kind of a
clergyman, one that you couldn't see through so plain, but perhaps
this was real enough for a dream.
And of course the clergyman, though misty, was really real, and
able to marry people, and he did. When the ceremony was over the
clergyman wandered about the island collecting botanical specimens,
for he was a great botanist, and the ruling passion was strong even
in an insane fit.
There was a splendid wedding feast. Can you fancy Jane and Anthea,
and Robert and Cyril, dancing merrily in a ring, hand-in-hand with
copper-coloured savages, round the happy couple, the queen cook and
the burglar consort? There were more flowers gathered and thrown
than you have ever even dreamed of, and before the children took
carpet for home the now married-and-settled burglar made a speech.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'and savages of both kinds, only
I know you can't understand what I'm a saying of, but we'll let
that pass. If this is a dream, I'm on. If it ain't, I'm onner
than ever. If it's betwixt and between--well, I'm honest, and I
can't say more. I don't want no more 'igh London society--I've got
some one to put my arm around of; and I've got the whole lot of
this 'ere island for my allotment, and if I don't grow some
broccoli as'll open the judge's eye at the cottage flower shows,
well, strike me pink! All I ask is, as these young gents and
ladies'll bring some parsley seed into the dream, and a penn'orth
of radish seed, and threepenn'orth of onion, and I wouldn't mind
goin' to fourpence or fippence for mixed kale, only I ain't got a
brown, so I don't deceive you.
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