topher's head there
was no dislodging it. He now talked of hose-in-hose constantly. One
day he announced that he was "discontented" once more, and should
remain so till he had "found a hose-in-hose." I enticed him to a field
where I knew it was possible to secure an occasional oxlip, but he
only looked pale, shook his head distressingly, and said, "I don't
think nothin' of Oxlips." Coloured primroses would not comfort him. He
professed to disbelieve in the time-honoured prescription, "Plant a
primrose upside down, and it will come up a polyanthus," and refused
to help me to make the experiment. At last the worst came. He suddenly
spoke, with smiles--"I _know_ where we'll find hose-in-hose! In
Mary's Meadow. It's the fullest field of cowslips there is. Hurrah!
Supposing we find hose-in-hose, and supposing we find green cowslips,
and supposing we find curled cowslips or galligaskins, and
supposing--"

But I could not bear it, I fairly ran away from him, and shut myself
up in my room and cried. I knew it was silly, and yet I could not bear
the thought of having to satisfy everybody's curiosity, and describe
that scene in Mary's Meadow, which had wounded me so bitterly, and
explain why I had not told of it before.

I cried, too, for another reason. Mary's Meadow had been dear to us
all, ever since I could remember. It was always our favourite field.
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, whe