“Yes, corn—” returned Andersen, “corn and wine and oil! Those are the natural, the beautiful, products of the earth. Things that are fed upon sun and air—not upon the bones of the dead! All these Nevilton places, however luxuriant, seem to me to smell of death.”
“But was this corner really a churchyard?” asked the Italian. “I hope Mrs. Seldom won’t stroll down this way and see us!”
“Mrs. Seldom is well suited to the place she lives in,” returned the other. “She lives upon the Past, just as her garden does—just as her potatoes do! These English vicarages are dreadful places. They have all the melancholy of age without its historic glamour. And how morbid they are! Any of your cheerful Latin curés would die in them, simply of damp and despair.”
“But do tell me about this spot,” repeated Lacrima, with a little shiver. “Why did you say it was a peculiar churchyard?”
“It was the place where they buried unbaptized children,” answered Andersen, and added, in a lower tone, “how cold it is getting! It must be the shadow we are in.”
“But you haven’t yet,” murmured Lacrima, “you haven’t yet told me, what those weeds are.”
“Well—we call them ‘mares’-tails’ about here,” answered the stone-carver, “I don’t know their proper name.”
“But why don’t they dig them up? Look! They are growing all among the potatoes.”
“They can’t dig them up,” returned the man. “They can’t get at their roots. They are the worst and most obstinate weed there is. They grow in all the Nevilton gardens. They are the typical Nevilton flora. They must have grown here in the days of the druids.”
“But how absurd!” cried Lacrima. “I feel as if I could pull them up with my hands. The earth looks so soft.”