der persons who at an odd moment, while waiting for dinner, or
before going to bed, may take up a little one's book, and turn over a
few of its leaves. Some such readers, in virtue of their hearts being
young and old both at once, discern more in the children's books than
the children themselves.

CHAPTER XXI

The Bees' Nest

It was twelve o'clock on a delicious Saturday in the height of summer.
We poured out of school with the gladness of a holiday in our hearts.
I sauntered home full of the summer sun, and the summer wind, and the
summer scents which filled the air. I do not know how often I sat down
in perfect bliss upon the earthen walls which divided the fields from
the road, and basked in the heat. These walls were covered with grass
and moss. The odour of a certain yellow feathery flower, which grew on
them rather plentifully, used to give me special delight. Great
humble-bees haunted the walls, and were poking about in them
constantly. Butterflies also found them pleasant places, and I
delighted in butterflies, though I seldom succeeded in catching one. I
do not remember that I ever killed one. Heart and conscience both were
against that. I had got the loan of Mrs. Trimmer's story of the family
of Robins, and was every now and then reading a page of it with
unspeakable delight. We had very few books for children in those days
and in that far out-of-the-way place, and those we did get were the
more dearly prized. It was almost dinner-time before I reached home.
Somehow in this grand weather, welcome as dinner always was, it did
not possess the same amount of interest as in the cold bitter winter.
This day I almost hurried over mine to get out again into the broad
sunlight. Oh, how stately the hollyhocks towered on the borders of the
shrubbery! The guelder-roses hung like balls of snow in their
wilderness of green leaves; and here and there the damask roses, dark
almost to blackness, and with a soft velvety surface, enriched the
sunny air with their colour and their scent. I never see these roses
now. And the little bushes of polyanthus gemmed the dark earth between
with their varied hues. We did not know anything about flowers except
the delight they gave us, and I dare say I am putting some together
which would not be out at the same time, but that is how the picture
comes back to my memory.

I was leaning in utter idleness over the gate that separated the
little lawn and its surroundings from the roa