LOLLY WILLOWES
rhythmically a rhyme her grandmother had taught her:
And drink mugwort in May,
So many fine young maidens
Would not go to the clay."
Laura would very willingly have drunk mugwort in May -also, for this rhyme of Nannie's, so often and so impressively rehearsed, had taken fast hold of her imagination. She had always had a taste for botany, she had also inherited a fancy for brewing. One of her earliest pleasures had been to go with Everard to the brewery and look into the great vats while he, holding her firmly with his left hand, with his right plunged a long stick through the clotted froth which, working and murmuring, gradually gave way until far below through the tumbling, dissolving rent the beer was disclosed.
Botany and brewery she now combined into one pursuit, for at the spur of Nannie's rhyme she turned her attention into the forsaken green byways of the rural pharmacopœia. From Everard she got a little still, from the family recipe-books much information and good advice; and where these failed her, Nicholas Culpepper
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