ld Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,
Water or Wood or Air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.

The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they
could remember of Midsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made them
a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it
with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They
began when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a
donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds Titania, Queen of the
Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three
little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended
where he falls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom,
as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy-cloth cap for Puck, and
a paper donkey's head out of a Christmas cracker--but it tore if you
were not careful--for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of
columbines and a foxglove wand.

The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little
mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent
round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old
Fairy Ring of darkened grass, which was the stage. The millstream
banks, overgrown with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient
places to wait in till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it
said that Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable
setting for his play. They were not, of course, allowed to act on
Midsummer Night itself, but they went down after tea on Midsummer Eve,
when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper--hard-boiled
eggs, Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope--with them. Three
Cows had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise
that one could hear all down the meadow; and the noise of the Mill at
work sounded like bare feet running on hard ground. A cuckoo sat on a
gate-post singing his broken June tune, 'cuckoo-cuck', while a busy
kingfisher crossed from the mill-stream, to the brook which ran on the
other side of the meadow. Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy
stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass.

Their play went beautifully. Dan remembered all his parts--Puck,
Bottom, and the three Fairies--and Una never forgot a word of
Titania--not even the difficult piece where she