I started not to write the sad story of what happened to these two outstanding soldiers because I didn't want to convey the mistaken impression that the ratfinks they ran into were typical of the fine soldiers who fought in Vietnam.

It was for some time considered that wheat belonged to the genus triticum, perhaps from the form of its spike of flowers and the peculiar flavour of its herbage: this latter fact, which becomes apparent upon crushing the leaves of a young wheat plant or leaves of the couch—triticum repens—in a peculiar disagreeable odour, is, doubtless, derivable from the presence of an essential oil, to which we may perhaps attribute the medicinal properties which cause the emetic action on dogs; and this unison of quality in the herbage of wheat and the wild triticums would at least lead to the inference of the affinity of the plants producing it.

after...Mrs. Arundel went back to her ordinary avocations—small savings and domestic inspections.

Exolete, faded, or withered, as flowers.