A comet
appeared in the sky that year, and everybody was talking about it. One
day he said to me:--
"There's a comet coming, ain't there, sir?" He talked about it as though
it were a circus.
"Coming!" I answered, "it's come. Haven't you seen it?"
"No, sir."
"Oh, well, you have a look for it to-night. It's worth seeing."
"Yees, sir, I should like to see it. It's got a tail, ain't it, sir?"
"Yes, a very fine tail."
"Yees, sir, they said it 'ad a tail. Where do you go to see it, sir?"
"Go! You don't want to go anywhere. You'll see it in your own garden at
ten o'clock."
He thanked me, and, tumbling over a sack of potatoes, plunged head
foremost into his punt and departed.
Next morning, I asked him if he had seen the comet.
"No, sir, I couldn't see it anywhere."
"Did you look?"
"Yees, sir. I looked a long time."
"How on earth did you manage to miss it then?" I exclaimed. "It was a
clear enough night. Where did you look?"
"In our garden, sir. Where you told me."
"Whereabouts in the garden?" chimed in Amenda, who happened to be
standing by; "under the gooseberry bushes?"
"Yees--everywhere."
That is what he had done: he had taken the stable lantern and searched
the garden for it.
But the day when he broke even his own record for foolishness happened
about three weeks later.
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