We do not know at what hour in the bleak late February morning the little box was left in the porch. It was found there by the earliest maid, and brought to the Master of the House with his letters in due course; a box that obviously had lately contained carbolic soap. Inside in a nest of moss, carefully covered with red bramble leaves, was a bunch of primroses tied with red wool, and the following “verses”:
“Beneath the moss and the mast,
Though the weather has been wet and cold,
I manage to raise my head
Down in the Sussex wold.”
Thus it began, speaking in the name of the Primrose, to enter, rapidly and boldly into the sweep’s personality:
“To-day I passed by the way,
So I stayed and picked you a few,
To show I do not forget
The chat I had with you.”