Noughts and Crosses | Page 5

last always, as Victor Hugo says. When, after many years, I revisited
the valley, the stream had carried the seeds half a mile below
Loose-heels, and painted its banks with monkey-blossoms all the way.
But the finest, I was glad to see, still inhabited the marsh.
Now, it is rare to find this plant growing wild; for, in fact, it is a garden
flower. And its history here is connected with a bit of mud wall, ruined
and covered with mosses and ragwort, that still pushed up from the
swampy ground when I knew it, and had once been part of a cottage.
How a cottage came here, and how its inhabitants entered and went out,
are questions past guessing; for the marsh hemmed it in on three sides,
and the fourth is a slope of hill fit to break your neck. But there was the
wall, and here is the story.
One morning, near the close of the last century, a small child came
running down to the village with news that the cottage, which for ten
years had stood empty, was let; there was smoke coming out at the
chimney, and an outlandish lady walking in the garden. Being
catechised, he added that the lady wore bassomy bows in her cap, and
had accosted him in a heathen tongue that caused him to flee, fearing
worse things. This being told, two women, rulers of their homes, sent
their husbands up the valley to spy, who found the boy had spoken
truth.
Smoke was curling from the chimney, and in the garden the lady was
still moving about--a small yellow creature, with a wrinkled but
pleasant face, white curls, and piercing black eyes. She wore a black
gown, cut low in the neck, a white kerchief, and bassomy (or purplish)
bows in her cap as the child had stated. Just at present she was busy
with a spade, and showed an ankle passing neat for her age, as she
turned up the neglected mould. When the men plucked up gallantry
enough to offer their services, she smiled and thanked them in broken
English, but said that her small forces would serve.
So they went back to their wives; and their wives, recollecting that the
cottage formed part of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson Morth,
"than whom," as the tablet to his memory relates, "none was better to

castigate the manners of the age." He was a burly, hard-riding ruffian,
and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben in Launceston streets is
yet told on the countryside.
Parson Morth wanted to know if he couldn't let his cottage to an invalid
lady and her sister without consulting every wash-mouth in the parish.
"Aw, so there's two!" said one of them, nodding her head. "But tell us,
Parson dear, ef 'tes fitty for two unmated women to come trapesing
down in a po'shay at dead o' night, when all modest flesh be in their
bed-gowns?"
Upon this the Parson's language became grossly indelicate, after the
fashion of those days. He closed his peroration by slamming the front
door on his visitors; and they went down the hill "blushing" (as they
said) "all over, at his intimate words."
So nothing more was known of the strangers. But it was noticed that
Parson Morth, when he passed the cottage on his way to meet or market,
would pull up his mare, and, if the outlandish lady were working in the
garden, would doff his hat respectfully.
"Bon jour, Mdmzelle Henriette"--this was all the French the Parson
knew. And the lady would smile back and answer in English.
"Good-morning, Parson Morth."
"And Mamzelle Lucille?"
"Ah, just the same, my God! All the day stare--stare. If you had known
her before!--so be-eautiful, so gifted, si bien elevee! It is an affliction:
but I think she loves the flowers."
And the Parson rode on with a lump in his throat.
So two years passed, during which Mademoiselle Henriette tilled her
garden and turned it into a paradise. There were white roses on the
south wall, and in the beds mignonette and boy's-love, pansies,

carnations, gillyflowers, sweet-williams, and flaming great hollyhocks;
above all, the yellow monkey-blossoms that throve so well in the
marshy soil. And all that while no one had caught so much as a glimpse
of her sister, Lucille. Also how they lived was a marvel. The outlandish
lady bought neither fish, nor butcher's meat, nor bread. To be sure, the
Parson sent down a pint of milk every morning from his dairy; the can
was left at the garden-gate and fetched at noon, when it was always
found neatly scrubbed, with the price of the milk inside. Besides, there
was a plenty of vegetables in the garden.
But this was not