250 WHISPERS FROM FAIRYLAND. [v.

 

something more like a boiled tapioca pudding than
anything else. Still the men worked on just as if
they had regular heads like other people, and the
puddings never broke, or crumbled, or fell off, but
kept on the shoulders quite well, as if they had been
used to it all their lives. Harry was never so as-
tonished in his life, but before he could say or do
‘anything to express his astonishment, it was greatly
increased by the sight of another marvel. The gar-
deners, as I have said, were ‘ bedding out,’ or, in other
words, planting ‘annuals’ in the little beds upon the
lawn, which were fantastically cut about in different
shapes and sizes. But the plants which they were
putting in at the moment when Harry began to ob-
serve them bore a curious resemblance to men’s heads,
and when one of the men drew back to let the little
old gentleman see how he was getting on, Harry saw
a number of heads planted in the bed at which he
had been working, every head of which bore an un-
mistakable resemblance to that of his old enemy, the
umpire Watkins! Yes! Facing every way, So that
a person walking round the bed might have the ad-
vantage of studying the features of his beautiful and
intellectual visage from every possible point of view,
there was Watkins !

How one man could have so many heads, how he
could be alive and smiling (as the faces were) after
having had his head cut off, or how indeed he ever
got there at all, whether with one head or five hun-
dred, were questions which mightily perplexed Harry,
and which he found himself totally unable to answer. °
As he gazed and wondered, with perhaps some shade