u to make faces at Goliath. He soon began to talk again.

"Th' ould shepherd fetched me these swede greens; I axed un three days
ago; I know'd we was going to have this yer mutton. You got to settle
these yer things aforehand."

"Axed," muttered Mrs. Iden.

"Th' pigeons have been at um, they be 'mazing fond of um, so be the
larks. These be the best as thur was. They be the best things in the
world for the blood. Swede greens be the top of all physic. If you can
get fresh swede tops you don't want a doctor within twenty miles.
Their's nothing in all the chemists' shops in England equal to swede
greens"--helping himself to a large quantity of salt.

"What a lot of salt you _do_ eat!" muttered Mrs. Iden.

"Onely you must have the real swedes--not thuck stuff they sells in
towns; greens they was once p'rhaps, but they be tough as leather, and
haven't got a drop of sap in um. Swedes is onely to be got about March."

"Pooh! you can get them at Christmas in London," said Mrs. Iden.

"Aw, can 'ee? Call they swede tops? They bean't no good; you might as
well eat dried leaves. I tell you these are the young fresh green shoots
of spring"--suddenly changing his pronunciation as he became interested
in his subject and forgot the shafts of irritation shot at him by his
wife. "They are full of sap--fresh sap--the juice which the plant
extracts from the earth as the active power of the sun's rays increases.
It is this sap which is so good for the blood. Without it the vegetable
is no more than a woody fibre. Why the sap should be so powerful I
cannot tell you; no one knows, any more than they know _how_ the plant
prepares it. This is one of those things which defy analysis--the
laboratory is at fault, and can do nothing with it." ("More salt!"
muttered Mrs. Iden. "How can you eat such a quantity of salt?") "There
is something beyond what the laboratory can lay hands on; something that
cannot be weighed, or seen, or estimated, neither by quantity, quality,
or by any means. They analyse champagne, for instance; they find so many
parts water, so much sugar, so much this, and so much that; but out of
the hundred parts there remain ten--I think it is ten--at all events so
many parts still to be accounted for. They escape, they are set down as
volatile--the laboratory has not even a distinct name for this
component; the laboratory knows nothing at all about it, cannot even
name it. But this unknown constituent is the real champagne. So