“Is it a tree?”
“It will grow into a small tree; but they cut it every year, and take the sprouts. It grows in rows, just as you raise corn, and just as straight and smooth as a bulrush, without any limbs, only leaves. They peel it, and the leaves all come off with the bark, and leave a smooth, white rod—some of them eight feet long. If they become ever so dry, and you throw them into water, they will become tough as before. If I only had sallies, I could make a basket that would hold water, and the handsomest work-baskets for mother that ever was, and color them if I could get the dye-stuffs. When we make farm-baskets and hampers, we leave the bark on; but when we make nice baskets, we peel it off. We call this whitening them.
“We also strip it into stuff as thin as a shaving, to wind round the handles of nice baskets and fancy things, and call it skein work, because this thin stuff is made up into skeins, for use like yarn.”
“What does it look like?” said Ben.
“It has a long, narrow leaf of bluish green; and in the spring, before anything else starts, it has a white stuff on it like cotton-wool; we call it palm; and on Palm Sunday the people carry it to church; and if you put a piece of it on the ground, in a wet place, it will take root.”
“I know what it is. It’s what we call pussy-willow and dog-willow, but I never thought it was tough enough to make baskets; besides, it grows crooked and scrubby.”
“Perhaps it is not like ours; but ours would not grow straight except they were cut off. A sprout is different from a branch. Does the willow, as you call it, grow on the island?”
“Yes; down by the brook and the swamp.”
“Tell us something about the folks in the old country,” said Joe. “What else did your father do besides make baskets? Did he own any land?”
“Nobody owns any land in England but the quality and the rich esquires. Poor people don’t own anything; not even their souls,—leastways, that is what my grandfather used to say,—for they had to ask some great man what they ought to think. My father was a tenant of the Earl of Bedford. My grandfather once lived by the coal mines at Dudley, in Staffordshire. It was named after Lord Dudley Ward, who owned extensive iron mines. Occasionally he came to visit his property, with carriages, and servants, and livery, and a great parade. On holidays he sometimes gave them beef and ale. These poor, simple miners thought he was more than a man. One day when he was riding by, the horses prancing, the people cheering, and the footmen in their red suits, a little boy was looking on with amazement. At length he said to his father, ‘Fayther, if God Almighty dies, who’ll be God Almighty then?’ ‘Why, Lord Dudley Ward, you foo’.’”