Like every woman-child of her age she was curious about babies. She had heard, over in America, that babies came either at early morning or at shut of eve, and were to be found in parsley beds. Now old Mr. Battershall grew parsley to make you proud. At the Merchester Rural Gardening Show he regularly took first prize; his potting-shed, in the north-east angle of the wall, was papered with winning tickets from bench to roof. At first when he saw Corona moving about the bed, lifting the parsley leaves, he had a mind to chide her away; for, as he put it, "Children and chicken be always a-pickin'—the mischief's in their natur'." Finding, however, that she did no damage, yet harked back to the parsley again and again, he set her down for an unusually intelligent child, who somehow knew good gardening when she saw it.
"Glad to see you admirin' it, missie," he said one morning, coming up behind her unperceived.
Corona, in the act of upturning a leaf, started and drew back her hand. Babies—she could not tell why—made their appearance in this world by stealth, and must be searched for furtively.
"A mort o' prizes I've took with that there parsley one time and another," pursued Mr. Battershall, not perceiving the flush of guilt on her face (for his eyesight was, in his own words, not so young as it used to be). "Goodbody's Curly Mammoth is the strain, and I don't care who knows it, for the secret's not in the strain, but in the way o' raisin' it. I grows for a succession, too. Summer or winter these six-an'-twenty years St. Hospital's ne'er been without a fine bed o' parsley, I thank the Lord!"
Six-and-twenty years.… It was comforting in a way to know that parsley grew here all the seasons round. But—six-and-twenty years, and not one child in the place save herself, who had come over from America! Yet Mr. Battershall was right; it seemed excellent parsley.
"You don't find that anything comes and—and takes away—" she hazarded, but came to a full stop.
"There's slugs," answered Mr. Battershall stolidly, "and there's snails. Terrible full o' snails the old wall was till I got the Master to repoint it."
"Would snails—"
"Eh?" he asked as she hesitated.
"They might take away the—the flowers, for instance."