one, so he plucked a blade of Shepherd's Purse
from the grass, soliloquizing, "Now had I been a shepherd, or had the
shepherd's name been Martin, here was my purse to my hand. And then,
having saved my riches I might have got married. Yet I never was a
shepherd, nor ever knew a shepherd of my name; and a penny is in any
case a great deal too much money for a man to marry on, be he a
shepherd or no. For it is always best to marry on next-to-nothing, from
which a penny is three times removed."

Then he went on spinning his penny in the air again, humming to himself
a song of no value, which, so far as the girls could tell for the hair
over their ears, went as follows:

If I should be so lucky
As a farthing for to find.
I wouldn't spend the farthing
According to my mind,
But I'd beat it and I'd bend it
And I'd break it into two,
And give one half to a Shepherd
And the other half to you.
And as for both your fortunes,
I'd wish you nothing worse
Than that YOUR half and HIS half
Should lie in the Shepherd's Purse.

At the end of the song he spun the penny so high that it fell into the
Well-House; and endeavoring to catch it he flung the spire of
wild-flower after it, and so lost both. And nobody took the least
notice of his song or his loss.

Then Martin said, "Who cares?" and took a new clay pipe and a little
packet from his pocket; and he wandered about the orchard till he had
found an old tin pannikin, and he scooped up some water from the
duckpond and made a lather in it with the soap in the packet, and sat
on the gate and blew bubbles. The first bubble in the pipe was always
crystal, and sometimes had a jewel hanging from it which made it fall
to the earth; and the second was tinged with color, and the third
gleamed like sunset, or like peacocks' wings, or rainbows, or opals.
All the colors of earth and heaven chased each other on their surfaces
in all the swift and changing shapes that tobacco smoke plays at on the
air; but of all their colors they take the deepest glow of one or two,
and now Martin would blow a world of flame and orange through the
trees, or one of blue and gold, or another of green and rose. And, as
he might have watched his dreams, he watched the bubbles float away;
and break. But one of the loveliest at last sailed over the Well-House
and between the ropes of the swing and among the fruit-laden boughs,
miraculously escaping all perils; and over the hedge, where a s