One day my landlady, going along the village street, saw Billy driving home in the farm trap with what looked like a gigantic yellow buttonhole in his coat. "Why, Billy, whatever have you got there?" she cried when he pulled the horse up to speak to her. "Flowers," said Billy. "I saw them in a cornfield, and I left the horse and went right out into the middle of the field to get them. Ain't they pretty?" And taking the bunch, the stems of which he had thrust into his top pocket, he handed it down for her to admire.
"Goodness me, boy, it's nothing but charlock!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, I know," said Billy. "And they are very pretty; just you look at them--perhaps you never knew how pretty they are." Then he added sententiously, "They are flowers, and all flowers are beautiful."
"Dear, dear!" said she for only reply, handing him back his bouquet.
"When I get home," continued Billy, "I'll put them in water to keep them fresh and set them on the table," and away he drove.
Billy with his charlock flowers reminds me of an incident on a farm in Hampshire where I was staying. The farmer was a hard-headed and very hard-working man absorbed in the great business of keeping his farm like a farm and of making it pay. Tares, turnip-fly, charlock, couch-grass and their like--these were his enemies which he hated. And his wife was his worthy helpmate.
One day I brought in a big bunch of poppies, and after arranging them on their tall stems with some feathery grasses in a vase I put them on the table just laid for the midday meal. The farmer came in fresh from his work, his mind as usual absorbed in his affairs, and first taking up the carving-knife and fork hurriedly said, "For what we are about to receive," and was just going to plunge the fork into the joint when he caught sight of the splendid flowers before him on his own table, audaciously smiling their scarlet smile right at him.
"What are those?" he said, pointing with his knife at the flowers and addressing his wife in no pleasant tones. "What does this mean?"
"I can tell you," I said. "I gathered them myself in one of your fields and put them on the table much against your wife's wish. I can't imagine why she objected. It is one of our finest wild flowers--I call it the Farmer's Glory."