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"
Tut, tut!" said the Vicar to his breakfast things--the day after the
coming of Mrs. Skinner. "Tut, tut! what's this?" and poised his glasses
at his paper with a general air of remonstrance.
"
Giant wasps! What's the world coming to? American journalists, I
suppose! Hang these Novelties! Giant gooseberries are good enough for
me.
"Nonsense!" said the Vicar, and drank off his coffee at a gulp, eyes
steadfast on the paper, and smacked his lips incredulously.
"Bosh!" said the Vicar, rejecting the hint altogether.
But the next day there was more of it, and the light came.
Not all at once, however. When he went for his constitutional that day
he was still chuckling at the absurd story his paper would have had him
believe. Wasps indeed--killing a dog! Incidentally as he passed by the
site of that first crop of puff-balls he remarked that the grass was
growing very rank there, but he did not connect that in any way with the
matter of his amusement. "We should certainly have heard something of
it," he said; "Whitstable can't be twenty miles from here."
Beyond he found another puff-ball, one of the second crop, rising like
a roc's egg out of the abnormally coarsened turf.
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