You see, the beans really assumed more than ordinary importance.
But alas, when bean time came, all that decorated the bean plot was one miserable row of wretched-looking stalks.
“It’s that thur blight agin,” remarked Ananias; “I watched it a-comin’ up the valley.”
“But why didn’t you pinch off the tops, if they were showing blight?” I inquired; “then they would have made fresh shoots lower down.”
He shook his head and looked at me pityingly: “We don’t do our beans like that a-here.”
“And where are all the other rows,” I asked; “I suppose blight didn’t carry off roots and all of the remainder?”
“No, ’twere slugs, I warrant, or birds, or else the seed were stale, maybe.”
Ursula carefully turned over the rest of the ground later on, but never a glimmer of a benighted bean did she find.
Still, Ananias was, as usual, quite willing to be obliging. “My beans has done uncommon well this year,” he continued. “It’s jest all accordin’ how it takes ’em; sometimes mine does well and t’other people’s doesn’t; and then agin t’other people’ll have a fine crop and I won’t have a bean. I can let you have some o’ mine if you like. I know you’re powerful fond o’ broad beans. I allus say you’re jest like my missus.” (I’m sorry I haven’t a portrait of stout, unwashed, sixty-five-year-old Sapphira to reproduce; without it you cannot possibly understand how pleased I was!)
He brought over half a bushel, explaining that he had to charge twopence a pound more than other people, as these were specially large and good yielders, that were expensive in the first place.
They were remarkably fine beans, indeed as fine as I have ever seen; and I wrote to the firm of seedsmen and told them their mammoth variety had proved all they claimed for it.
I conclude the miserable row in my garden was a twopenny packet bought from the travelling huckster who peddles seeds around the villages at suitable seasons.
These instances are sufficient to indicate the trend of Ursula’s thoughts when she started to philosophize on the garden. She interrupted her valuable remarks, however, to exclaim: “Do look at that wench!” And Virginia might well be looked at! Her exertions had turned her the colour of a peony; down her face streamed copious “extract of forehead.” The clipping mania had got thorough hold of her, and she was trying to trim every hedge about the place, leaving in her wake a trail of clippings for someone else to clear up—as is the way with all first-class amateurs.