You can imagine the pitiful, shrivelled little things that had struggled to maintain life on the window sills of the houses in those dingy courts and darksome alleys. Never did I see such an array in all my life. They would almost, when you thought of country gardens where the daffodils stand up and brave the April winds, they would almost have brought the tears to your eyes.
Little geraniums there were, blinking their poor, tired eyes at the light. One woman brought a plant of sweet pea, which was climbing so wearily, yet so anxiously out of its little pot of red up a wee thin stake of wood. You knew it would never reach the light of the heaven it so yearned to see. The two faint blossoms that it bore were pale, like fragile slum children. What would I not have given then to wrench it out of its poor bed and give it to the great generous sweep of an open field, with a hedge of hawthorn perhaps on which to lean its tired arms.
The woman saw my eyes in its direction and she beamed with conscious pride.
“It doesn’t look very healthy,” said I.
She gazed at it and then at me with open wonder in her eyes.
“Not ’ealthy?” she said—“why, I’ve never seen none looking better. Look at that pansy over there—it can’t ’old its ’ead up.”
“But why compare it with the worst one in the show?” I asked—“I didn’t mean it as a personal criticism when I said it wasn’t healthy. I’m sure you’ve taken a tremendous amount of care over it.”
“Care!” she exclaimed—“I should just think I ’ave. It’s ’ad all the scrapin’s off the road in front of our ’ouse.”
I passed on, for the judges were coming round and the young curate just down from the university has not a proper respect for the Press. He has probably written for it. Now the young curate of the parish was the principal judge.