‘I daresay it’s true what the Wilmington says,’ said Caroline when they were alone, ‘but it doesn’t make any difference. Our Lady wasn’t dressed up to look the part. She was the picture. Perhaps our heart’s desire will turn out to be seeing her again. Let’s go and see if the seed has flowered.’
It had. In that plot of the terraced garden which the old gardener had marked with the pencilled slip-label, seven tall straight stems had shot up, perfect and even in each leaf and stalk, as every plant was which grew in that wonderful soil. And each stem bore one only flower, white and star-shaped, and with a strange sweet scent.
‘I wish Rupert were here,’ said Charlotte. ‘We ought to wait for Rupert.’
And as she spoke, there was Rupert, coming to them through the flowers of the lower garden.
‘So they’ve flowered,’ he said, without any other greeting.
‘Yes, and now we’re going to eat them and get our heart’s desire. Oh, Rupert, I do wish you believed in it all.’
‘Perhaps I do,’ said Rupert. ‘The decent way old Macpherson has behaved while I’ve been there makes you ready to believe in anything.’
‘Then let’s eat them,’ said Caroline; ‘one each, and the other three we’ll divide as well as we can.’
Each plucked a white starry blossom. The stalks snapped off clean and fresh like primrose stalks. Then the four put each a hand on the stalk of the fifth flower and broke it between them. And so with the sixth and the seventh. Caroline divided the three flowers with extreme care and accuracy and handed its share to each child. Then, standing in a ring in the sunny garden, the four ate the white flowers. The taste of them was pleasant but strange, something like pineapple and something like flower-artichokes (which have the most mysterious taste in the world)—something like spice and something like the fruit you eat in dreams.
And as they finished eating they heard a foot on the steps of the terrace and turned, and it was the Uncle, coming towards them with pale-coloured papers in one hand and a bunch of waxy white flowers in the other.