“Mr—er—he was just telling me—what do you think, Molly?” said Jack excitedly. “The Black Leaf came up in this plant-pot one year!”
“Oh,” Molly gasped, and gazed at the pot with awe. Such an ordinary plant-pot it looked, with nothing at all about it to suggest that it had ever been connected with any magic.
“Of course, missie,” Glan’s father explained mournfully, “it was no use me a-picking it that year, you see, because there was no Pumpkin to pick it for. Besides,” he added bitterly, “it on’y came up for spite. That’s all—pure spite, I call it—just to taunt me as it were. I couldn’t bide the sight of it—especially as the Pumpkin was out of reach—in—in your World.”
“What would have happened if you had picked it?” asked Jack.
“Nothing would have happened. At the end of the thirteen days it would have withered away, and the plant might not have come up again, perhaps—but I don’t know about that. Still, if it hadn’t, what should we have done this year when we do want it? Eh?”
“Yes,” said Molly. “It is a good job you didn’t pick it, because, supposing it didn’t come up again—I suppose there would have been no hope of getting rid of the Pumpkin this time?”
“Unless Old Nancy had discovered another spell,” suggested Jack.
The old man shook his head dismally, and ran his fingers through his beard.
“No,” he said. “I had a feeling—in my bones—that we should need the Black Leaf some day. I always said the Pumpkin would return from—from your World. And then—and then those dreams I had——”
“Oh, why didn’t the Leaf come up in your plant-pot this year!” sighed Molly.