Cecilia kept hers.
"If you will both go out of the room," she said, "take off your filthy
boots and come back in your right minds and decent clothing I'll try to
understand what you are both talking about."
They crawled out of the room abjectly and I came out into the open once
more.
"Good Lord! What a family to be in!" I said.
* * * * *
"Cecilia," said John at tea, "harking back to the question of Hairy
Bittercress----"
"Hazel Catkin," said Margery.
"What on earth----?" began Cecilia.
"I'll tell her," said Margery quickly. "Cecilia, we had a competition this
afternoon, seeing who could find most signs of Spring. Well, I found a bit
of Hazel Catkin----"
"Hairy Bittercress," said John.
"I tell you----" went on Margery.
"If you will calm yourself," interrupted John with dignity, "we will
discuss the point."
"There's nothing to discuss. What do you know about botany, I'd like to
know?"
"My dear child," said John, "when you were an infant-in-arms, nay, before
you existed at all, it was my custom to ramble o'er the dewy meads,
plucking the nimble Nipplewort and the shy Speedwell. I breakfasted on
botany."
"Talking of botany," I broke in "there was a chap in my platoon----"
John groaned loudly.
"Do you suggest," I asked, "that he was not in my platoon?"
"I suggest nothing," he answered; "I only know that they can't all have
been in your platoon."
"All who, John?" asked Cecilia.
"All the chaps he tells us about. Haven't you noticed, since he came home,
it's impossible to mention any type or freak or extraordinary individual
that wasn't like somebody in his platoon? It must have been about five
thousand per cent. over strength."
"I treat your insults with contempt," I said, "and proceed with my story.
This chap had the same affliction that has taken Margery and yourself. He
spent his life searching for specimens of the Bingle-weed and the
five-leaved Funglebid. At bayonet-drill he would stop in the middle of a
'long-point, short-point, jab' to pluck a sudden Oojah-berry that caught
his eye. In the end his passion got him to Blighty."
"How?" asked Margery.
"Well," I continued, "it was the morning of the great German attack. My
friend--er--I will call him X--and myself were retiring on the village
of--er--Y, followed by about six million Germans. Shots were falling all
round us, when suddenly X saw a small wild flower at his feet. He bent down
to pick it up and--er----"
"That is quite enough, Alan," said Cecilia.
"That is all, Cecilia," I said; "that is how he got to Blighty."
"We will now proceed with the subject in hand," said John after a moment's
silence. He produced a small crushed piece of green-stuff from his pocket.
"The question before the house is, as we used to say in the Great War,
'_Qu'est-ce-que c'est que ceci?_' Any suggestions that it is of the Lemon
species will be returned unanswered. For my part I say it is Hairy
Bittercress."
"And I say it's Hazel Catkin," said Margery.
"And what says Hubert the herbalist?" asked John, handing the weed to me.