The biggest leaf we have in this country is certainly the burdock leaf.If you hold one in front of your little stomach,it's just like a real apron;and in rainy weather,if you lay it on your head,it does almost as well as an umbrella.It's really amazingly large.Now,a burdock never grows alone;no,when you see one you'll always see others around it.It's a splendid sight;and all this splendor is nothing more than food for snails—the big white snails which the fine people in olden days used to have made into fricassees.When they had eaten them,they would smack their lips and say,“My!How good that is!”For somehow they had the idea that the snails tasted delicious.You see,these snails lived on the burdock leaves,and that's why the burdock was first grown.
There was a certain old manor house where the people didn't eat snails any more.The snails had almost died out,but the burdock hadn't.These grew and grew on all the walks and flower beds—they couldn't be stopped—until the whole place was a forest of burdocks.Here and there stood an apple or a plum tree,but except for that,people wouldn't have thought there had ever been a garden there.Everywhere was burdock,and among the burdocks lived the last two incredibly old snails!
They themselves didn't know how old they were,but they could remember very clearly that once there had been a great many more of them,that they had descended from a prominent foreign family,and they knew perfectly well that the whole forest had been planted just for them and their family.
They had never been away from home,but they did know that somewhere there was something called a manor house,and that there you were boiled until you turned black,and were laid on a silver dish;but what happened afterwards they hadn't the least idea.Furthermore,they couldn't imagine what it would be like to be boiled and laid on a silver dish,but everyone said it must be very wonderful and a great distinction.Neither the cockchafer nor the toad nor the earthworm,whom they asked about it,could give them any information.None of their families had ever been boiled or laid on silver dishes.
So the old white snails knew they were by far the most important people in the world.The forest was there just for their sake,and the manor house existed just so that they could be boiled and laid on silver dishes!
The two old snails led a quiet and happy life,and since they were childless they had adopted a little orphan snail,which they were bringing up as their own child.He wouldn't grow very large,for he was only a common snail;but the two old snails—and especially the mother snail—thought it was easy to see how well he was growing.And she begged the father snail to touch the little snail's shell,if he couldn't see it,and so he felt it and found that she was right.
One day it rained very hard.
“Just listen to it drum on the burdock leaves!”cried Father Snail.“Rum-dum-dum!Rum-dum-dum!”
“Drops are also coming down here”!said the mother.“It's coming straight down the stalks,and it'll be wet down here before you know it.I'm certainly glad we have our own good houses and the little one has his own.We're better off than any other creatures;it's quite plain that we're the most important people in the world.We have our own houses from our very birth,and the burdock forest has been planted just for us.I wonder how far it extends,and what lies beyond it.”
