te the fields, except daisies and the cheerful dandelions.
These last are still growing obliquely, and not yet staring boldly up at
the sky, as in later life. There is also an occasional patch of
bugle--sturdy little blue sentinels, and a few purple orchids. In the
upper meadows where the wind is cold the daisies bend their stalk and lay
their heads on the ground (as they do at night), and their little noses
look red like poor Marian's in Shakespeare's winter song. In the daisy
it is the pink-tipped petals {56} huddling together that make this chilly
symbol a contrast to the happy star that sunshine shows.

Near the top of the hill is a bare pasture covered with cowslips, all
pointing their pretty heads one way. At first it seemed that they were
simply yielding to the fresh wind, but on picking them it was made clear
that they bent their stalks wilfully, not on compulsion. On the whole it
seemed that they were nodding towards the brighter light, but I could not
perceive that the quarter to which they turned had any advantage in
luminosity.

Close to the top of the hill is a little wood of nut-trees, and I looked
down into it over the hedge with a shock of pleasure at the chequer-work
of white and blue, a conspiracy of wild garlick and blue-bells. In this
land I have not seen the blue haze covering acres of cleared woodland
such as we have in Kent. But this colour-dance of the two plants is
beautiful in its own way. Now we have reached the rim of the valley, and
look over into a new country, with many red patches of ploughed land, and
sheep in the treeless fields instead of cattle. Here the skylark sings,
who is something of a stranger to us dwellers in the valley. The same is
true of the yellow-hammer, whose hot and dusty voice is less familiar
there. To one inland bred the seagulls feeding in the ploughed lands are
a delight. They seem an echo from the salt sea, or a variation (in a
musical sense) on the far away silver strip which is the Severn shining
down to the Bristol Channel.

We now come to a little wandering road, called for reasons unknown to me
Seven Leases Lane, and after a time end our wanderings at a point whence
we can look down on misty Gloucester and its cathedral; and this is a
historic spot if the rumour is to be trusted, that from here King Charles
watched the siege. The lane is pleasant with its plashed hedges beset
with traveller's joy (clematis) and bryony. Clematis likes to climb u