The Sunday Sunflower game is calling them after the black-letter
saints in the Kalendar, and reading about them in a very old book--a
big one with a black leather binding--in the attic, called _Lives of
the Saints_. I read, and then I tell it to Margery as we walk up and
down, and say--"This is St. Prisca, this is St. Fabian, this is St.
Agnes, this is St. Agatha, and this is St. Valentine"--and so on.
What made us first think of having them for Saints on Sunday, was that
the yellow does sometimes look so very like a glory round their faces.
We choose by turns which name to give to each, but if there is a very
big one with a lot of yellow flaming out, we always called him St.
George of England, because there is a very old figure of St. George
slaying the Dragon, in a painted window in our Church; and St.
George's hair is yellow, and standing out all round; and when the sun
shines through the window, so that you can't see his nose and his
mouth at all clearly, he looks quite wonderfully like a Sunflower.
Then on week-days, the game I like best is pretending that they are
women changed into flowers.
They feel so grown up with being so tall, that they are much more like
grown-up people turned into flowers than like children. I pretend my
doll is my child when I play with her; but I don't think I could
pretend a Sunflower was my child; and sometimes if Margery leaves me
alone with rather big Sunflowers, when it is getting dusk, and I look
up at them, and they stare at me with their big faces in the twilight,
I get so frightened for fear they should have got leave to go home at
night, _and be just turning_, that I run indoors as hard as ever I
can.
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