ps uncovering their small cold faces
when the first shivering spring days came. Only my piece that I so loved
was perpetually ugly and empty. And I sat in it thinking of these things
on that radiant day, and wept aloud.

Then an apprentice came by, a youth who had often seen me busily
digging, and noticing the unusual tears, and struck perhaps by the
difference between my garden and the profusion of splendour all around,
paused with his barrow on the path in front of me, and remarked
that nobody could expect to get blood out of a stone. The apparent
irrelevance of this statement made me weep still louder, the bitter
tears of insulted sorrow; but he stuck to his point, and harangued me
from the path, explaining the connection between north walls and tulips
and blood and stones till my tears all dried up again and I listened
attentively, for the conclusion to be drawn from his remarks was plainly
that I had been shamefully taken in by the head gardener, who was an
unprincipled person thenceforward to be for ever mistrusted and shunned.
Standing on the path from which the kindly apprentice had expounded his
proverb, this scene rose before me as clearly as though it had taken
place that very day; but how different everything looked, and how it had
shrunk! Was this the wide orchard that had seemed to stretch away,
it and the sloping field beyond, up to the gates of heaven? I believe
nearly every child who is much alone goes through a certain time of
hourly expecting the Day of Judgment, and I had made up my mind that
on that Day the heavenly host would enter the world by that very field,
coming down the slope in shining ranks, treading the daffodils under
foot, filling the orchard with their songs of exultation, joyously
seeking out the sheep from among the goats. Of course I was a sheep, and
my governess and the head gardener goats, so that the results could not
fail to be in every way satisfactory. But looking up at the slope and
remembering my visions, I laughed at the smallness of the field I had
supposed would hold all heaven.

Here again the cousins had been at work. The site of my garden was
occupied by a rockery, and the orchard grass with all its treasures
had been dug up, and the spaces between the trees planted with currant
bushes and celery in admirable rows; so that no future little cousins
will be able to dream of celestial hosts coming towards them across the
fields of daffodils, and will perhaps be the bette