l a wonder and a revelation to me that spring, since,
in the very words of Shelley:

There in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray.

Around and beyond Barton there lay fairyland. All was mysterious,
unexplored, rich with infinite possibilities. I should one day
enter it, the sword of make-believe in my hand, the cap of
courage on my head, 'when you are a big boy', said the oracle of
Mary Grace. For the present, we had to content ourselves with
being an unadventurous couple--a little woman, bent half-double,
and a preternaturally sedate small boy--as we walked very
slowly, side by side, conversing on terms of high familiarity, in
which Biblical and colloquial phrases were quaintly jumbled,
through the sticky red mud of the Pavor lanes with Barton as a
bourne before us.

When we came home, my Father would sometimes ask me for
particulars. Where had we been, whom had we found at home, what
testimony had those visited been able to give of the Lord's
goodness to them, what had Mary Grace replied in the way of
exhortation, reproof or condolence? These questions I hated at
the time, but they were very useful to me, since they gave me the
habit of concentrating my attention on what was going on in the
course of our visits, in case I might be called upon to give a
report. My Father was very kind in the matter; he cultivated my
powers of expression, he did not snub me when I failed to be
intelligent. But I overheard Miss Marks and Mary Grace discussing
the whole question under the guise of referring to 'you know
whom, not a hundred miles hence', fancying that I could not
recognize their little ostrich because its head was in a bag of
metaphor. I understood perfectly, and gathered that they both of
them thought this business of my going into undrained cottages
injudicious. Accordingly, I was by degrees taken 'visiting' only
when Mary Grace was going into the country-hamlets, and then I
was usually left outside, to skip among the flowers and stalk the
butterflies.

I must not, however, underestimate the very prominent part taken
all through this spring and summer of 1858 by the collection of
specimens on the seashore. My Father had returned, the chagrin of
his failure in theorizing now