Miss Ross had a large white book on her lap, she was turning the pages.
“I like this book of your Mother’s,” she said; “these phrases are from the writings of an old herbalist, and he speaks of the lime-leaf that ‘in Autumn becomes wan, and spotted as the doe.’
“‘The wyche-elme whose gold is let loose on the wind after night frostes, and cold dawnes.
“‘The delicate jargonell that keeps the sweets of France in old, warm, English gardens.’
“And further on he writes of ‘the sloe whose excellent purple blood makes so fine a comfort.’
“He speaks of the ‘green smockt filberte,’ and finally talks in this pleasant manner of the nature of mushrooms.
“‘Many do fear the goodly musherooms as poysonous damp weeds. But this doth in no ways abate the exceeding excellence of God’s Providence, that out of the grass and dew where nothing was, and where only the little worm turned in his sporte, come, as at the shaking of bells, these delicate meates.’
“The older you grow, children,” Miss Ross said, looking up from the book, “the more pleasure you will find in comfortable words. In well-adjusted phrase, and in lines that have beauty in their sound as in their imagery. I have found nourishment for the soul in the positive satisfaction to be derived from words.
‘With how slow steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face,’