The puff-balls of the lycoperdon form the devil's snuff-box, and in Ireland the nettle is his apron, and the convolvulus his garter; while at Iserlohn, in Germany, "the mothers, to deter their children eating the mulberries, sing to them that the devil requires them for the purpose of blacking his boots."

On my suggesting that stinging nettles were rather a desperate remedy, he assured me that "they acted as a blister, and counteracted the 'wapse.'

But the poisonous nettles of memory were the only harvest that had sprung from the presence of Mrs. Robson's sisters, and Claire was glad to uproot the arid product of their shallowness.