"'Tisn't no flannel, no, nor no dinners neither, not even a packet of tea," she answered. For a moment Nana returned to fetch a ribbon or a tie--some lost possession of Bess's. On seeing her Mrs. Eccles remained silent, for, as she whispered, "'twas a private matter." Then when Nana had disappeared, her courage returned, and she blurted out, "I knows as yer have one, for all Mr. Burbidge says. There always was one--one out alongside of the walled garden." I felt puzzled, but nodded and begged my old friend to tell me what it was she had come for. But a direct answer is not often to be got from the poor, you must wait for an answer, as a dear old clergyman once said to me, "as you must wait for flowers in an English spring." So I threaded my needle with a brilliant brown, and Mrs. Eccles's speech bubbled on, like a brook in February. [Sidenote: MRS. ECCLES'S MISSION] "It be in this way, for I know this place, same as the inside of my own kitchen," she said. "Didn't I work here fifty years agone, in the old days? I knowed this place," she said, looking round, "afore it war a haunt of the gentry, when it was farmer folk as lived here, and when I war a servin' wench, when I scrubbed, and cleaned, plucked geese at Yule-tide, and helped the missus in making mince-meat, and in making butter for the market. I know'd it then, and I knows it now." I tried to stem the old dame's eloquence, for the time I had at her disposal was limited; but my little old guest was voluble, and I had to sit quiet to learn her mission. At last light pierced through her discourse, and I discovered that she had come down for a leaf, or a sprig, of some plant. "You must come round and show me what it is you want," I said at last; and I covered up my embroidery and prepared to take her to the herb plots in the kitchen garden, as the most likely spot to find out what she was in need of. But halfway, Mrs. Eccles stopped dead, shook her head, and called out, "It never grow'd there, I be sure it never did. I know it does there," and she pointed back to the Abbey, "for I have a-know it afore yer was born, and, my dear, it war along top-side of the mound, at back of the red wall, where the missus used to grow her fever drinks, and where they put in cabbages for Christians and cows alike." As she spoke my funny old friend turned her back on the kitchen garden, and made for the quadrangle as hard as her old legs would take her. Mouse and I followed hot-foot behind. Suddenly Mrs. Eccles came to a dead stop at the foot of a green slope, on which the red wall was built, and pointed with her black stick, at a green shrub above her. "There her be," she cried triumphantly, "sure enough, same as a galenny's nest, snug and safe." I scrambled up the bank, and Mouse followed with a bound. The old body was almost breathless for a minute, but went on pointing like a pointer at the shrub.