y, breaking in with her clear childish
voice; and immediately, as if at her call, the real bird, from a
neighbouring tree (for these meadows are dotted with timber like a
park), began to echo my lovely little girl, 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' I have a
prejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but I cannot help it, I
have many such) against this 'harbinger of spring.' His note is so
monotonous, so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one hears
'cuckoo! cuckoo!' in dirty streets, amongst smoky houses, and the bird
is hated for faults not his own. But prejudices of taste, likings and
dislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason; so, to escape the
serenade from the tree, which promised to be of considerable duration
(when once that eternal song begins, on it goes ticking like a
clock)--to escape that noise I determined to excite another, and
challenged Lizzy to a cowslip-gathering; a trial of skill and speed,
to see which should soonest fill her basket. My stratagem succeeded
completely. What scrambling, what shouting, what glee from Lizzy! twenty
cuckoos might have sung unheard whilst she was pulling her own flowers,
and stealing mine, and laughing, screaming, and talking through all.

At last the baskets were filled, and Lizzy declared victor: and down
we sat, on the brink of the stream, under a spreading hawthorn, just
disclosing its own pearly buds, and surrounded with the rich and
enamelled flowers of the wild hyacinth, blue and white, to make our
cowslip-ball. Every one knows the process: to nip off the tuft of
flowerets just below the top of the stalk, and hang each cluster nicely
balanced across a riband, till you have a long string like a garland;
then to press them closely together, and tie them tightly up. We went on
very prosperously, CONSIDERING; as people say of a young lady's drawing,
or a Frenchman's English, or a woman's tragedy, or of the poor little
dwarf who works without fingers, or the ingenious sailor who writes with
his toes, or generally of any performance which is accomplished by means
seemingly inadequate to its production. To be sure we met with a few
accidents. First, Lizzy spoiled nearly all her cowslips by snapping them
off too short; so there was a fresh gathering; in the next place, May
overset my full basket, and sent the blossoms floating, like so many
fairy favours, down the brook; then, when we were going on pretty
steadily, just as we had made a superb wreath, and were thinking of
tying