the cuckoo-flowers and nibbled the stalk and leaflets to essay
the cress-like taste. In the garden, which was full of old-fashioned
shrubs and herbs, she watched the bees busy at the sweet-scented
'honey-plant,' and sometimes peered under the sage-bush to look at the
'effets' that hid there.

By the footpath through the meadows there were now small places where
the mowers had tried their new scythes as they came home, a little
warm with ale perhaps, from the market town. They cut a yard or two of
grass as they went through the fields, just to get the swing of the
scythe and as a hint to the farmer that it was time to begin. With the
first June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced--the two usually
coincide--and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and the
mowers, now watching one and now the other. One of the haymaking girls
was very proud because she had not lost a single wooden tooth out of
her rake, for it is easy to break or pull them out. In the next field
the mowers, one behind the other in echelon, left each his swathe as
he went. The tall bennets with their purplish anthers, the sorrel, and
the great white 'moon-daisies' fell before them. Cicely would watch
till perhaps the sharp scythe cut a frog, and the poor creature
squealed with the pain.

Then away along the hedge to the pond in the corner, all green with
'creed,' or duckweed, when one of the boys about the place would come
timidly up to offer a nest of eggs just taken, and if she would speak
to him would tell her about his exploits 'a-nisting,' about the
bombarrel tit--a corruption apparently of nonpareil--and how he had
put the yellow juice of the celandine on his 'wurrut' to cure it. Then
they pulled the plantain leaves, those that grew by the path, to see
which could draw out the longest 'cat-gut;' the sinews, as it were, of
the plant stretching out like the strings of a fiddle.

In the next meadow the cows had just been turned into fresh grass, and
were lazily rioting in it. They fed in the sunshine with the golden
buttercups up above their knees, literally wading in gold, their horns
as they held their heads low just visible among the flowers. Some that
were standing in the furrows were hidden up to their middles by the
buttercups. Their sleek roan and white hides contrasted with the green
grass and the sheen of the flowers: one stood still, chewing the cud,
her square face expressive of intense content, her beautiful
eye--there is no