We had coaxed our nurses there, when we could induce them to leave the
high-road, or when, luckily for us, on account of an epidemic, or for
some reason or another, they were forbidden to go gossiping into the
town. We had "pretended" fairies in the nooks of the delightfully
neglected hedges, and we had found fairy-rings to prove our
pretendings true. We went there for flowers; we went there for
mushrooms and puff-balls; we went there to hear the nightingale. What
cowslip balls and what cowslip tea-parties it had afforded us! It is
fair to the Old Squire to say that we were sad trespassers, before he
and Father quarrelled and went to law. For Mary's Meadow was a field
with every quality to recommend it to childish affections.
And now I was banished from it, not only by the quarrel, of which we
had really not heard much, or realized it as fully, but by my own
bitter memories. I cried afresh to think I should never go again to
the corner where I always found the earliest violets; and then I cried
to think that the nightingale would soon be back, and how that very
morning, when I opened my window, I had heard the cuckoo, and could
tell that he was calling from just about Mary's Meadow.
I cried my eyes into such a state, that I was obliged to turn my
attention to making them fit to be seen; and I had spent quite
half-an-hour in bathing them and breathing on my handkerchief, and
dabbing them, which is more soothing, when I heard Mother calling me.
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