152 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
home, for the first time, to visit the opposite coast ; 
but so truly British were his habits, that nothing 
could please or satisfy him. The soup was meagre, 
the pottage acid, the peas sweet, the wine sour, the 
cotfee bitter : the girls brown, their eyes too black, 
their caps too high, their petticoats too short, their 
language unintelligible ; their houses old, the inns 
dirty, the country too open, the roads too straight: 
in short, he saw every thing with such discontented 
eyes as to render the party uncomfortable, until good 
fortune led us to a rustic inn, where, in a small 
garden, were growing several fine Stocks, which, 
he affirmed, were the first good things he had seen 
since he left Sussex. On hearing the landlady 
acknowledge them to be de Girojliers de Brampton, 
he insisted on halting at her house, where he treated 
the party with a dejeuner d la fuurchette, and left 
the village with a sprig of the Brompton stock in 
his button-hole, his eyes sparkling with champaigns 
and good-humour, which lasted for the remainder of 
the journey, during which he often exclaimed, 
‘ Thanks to the Brompton Stock!’ ” 
