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The Return of Aunt Elisha cont

                             "Good day," I said to him on the next occasion, proffering my most polite manner." I have a suggestion to make, since you object to my Aunt being added to your garden. Could you instead incorporate her in the soil of the greenhouse? She'd never be a nuisance there. You could always rake her in if you didn't like the look of her."
      "You mean put her in the tomato bed? No! Certainly not. How could I ever eat a tomato without thinking I was - what can I say - cannibalising one of your relatives? Even if I could get over that feeling, what sort of tomatoes would they be - eh? An F2 Elisha variety? No, I'm quite happy with Eurocross, which, I'm glad to say behaves rather better than the Euro cash. No, you can't put her there. Sorry." And he closed the door with an air of finality which offered no chance of appeal. I retreated to the sanctuary of my home with Aunt Elisha safe and as intact as ashes can be.
      It was a sleepless night after that, knowing that her wrath would somehow get to me if I failed her. In fact, dawn was breaking when I finally decided on a course of action. I'd scatter her during the night when all was quiet and my uncharitable house owner, sound asleep. And this is just what I did - or rather tried to do, next night.
     It would be about two o'clock in the coldness of the night when I ventured into the garden with my Woolworth Elisha bag. Having opened the gate carefully and shuddered at the audible protest from its hinges, I would be about half way up the path when suddenly and without warning - FLIP - and there I was, bathed in lurid and brilliant glow of a sentry light which persistently and balefully eyed me from high up on the wall of the house. What to do now? Panic had me by the throat. I was just about to turn on my heels and make a dash for it when a new and terrible turn of events stopped me in my tracks.
      "Ho there!" came a deep and very masculine voice from outside the gate. A burly and helmeted Officer of the Law stood outside. "Ho there," he repeated with an air of great authority and without any hint of Santa Clause about him. "Just you stay right there, my lad. About to commit a burglary, eh? This time you won't get away with it. Now then," said he, coming up to me. "What's in the bag?"
      "My Aunt Elisha."
      "Don't get funny with me lad," he said without a trace of humour. "I've heard a lot of things in my time but never that. Aunt Elisha, is it? Ho ho!" and he came up to me, seizing me by the shoulder. "It's a jemmy, isn't it?" he said. "I know all about that."
      "No, really," I stuttered. "I - honest - it really is my Aunt Elisha, - if in sadly reduced circumstances."
     "Let me see," he growled, reaching down for the bag.
      "Oh, do be careful," I ventured. "She might spill out and she wouldn't like that."
      The constable took the bag and shook it, hearing the remains of my Aunt hissing as though in protest. "There's something funny about all this, my man. You'd better come to the station and sort it out there." By now he had realised I was at least not a violent kind of criminal, if perhaps a trifle unhinged, and led the way. We reached the Office somewhere about three o'clock. The sergeant seemed to believe my story and even saw something funny in it - bless him! So, with a sympathetic handshake he set me free to wander back to my home, bedraggled, in a downpour of rain, and sleep the sleep of the just - or was it unjust? I couldn't be sure about what next to do as the dawn revealed a hint of promise for the day and with the thought of an angry Aunt still figuring prominently in my thoughts. It was not turning out well at all.