it went; but I had forgotten one
thing; namely, the vast number of the city folk. Though the old
transgressors came no more, new ones arrived every day, and I found
myself confronted with the titanic task of educating a whole cityful to
the inexpediency of raiding my poppy field. During the process of
disburdening them I was accustomed to explaining my side of the case, but
I soon gave this over. It was a waste of breath. They could not
understand. To one lady, who insinuated that I was miserly, I said:

"My dear madam, no hardship is worked upon you. Had I not been
parsimonious yesterday and the day before, these poppies would have been
picked by the city hordes of that day and the day before, and your eyes,
which to-day have discovered this field, would have beheld no poppies at
all. The poppies you may not pick to-day are the poppies I did not
permit to be picked yesterday and the day before. Therefore, believe me,
you are denied nothing."

"But the poppies are here to-day," she said, glaring carnivorously upon
their glow and splendour.

"I will pay you for them," said a gentleman, at another time. (I had
just relieved him of an armful.) I felt a sudden shame, I know not why,
unless it be that his words had just made clear to me that a monetary as
well as an aesthetic value was attached to my flowers. The apparent
sordidness of my position overwhelmed me, and I said weakly: "I do not
sell my poppies. You may have what you have picked." But before the
week was out I confronted the same gentleman again. "I will pay you for
them," he said. "Yes," I said, "you may pay me for them. Twenty
dollars, please." He gasped, looked at me searchingly, gasped again, and
silently and sadly put the poppies down. But it remained, as usual, for
a woman to attain the sheerest pitch of audacity. When I declined
payment and demanded my plucked beauties, she refused to give them up.
"I picked these poppies," she said, "and my time is worth money. When
you have paid me for my time you may have them." Her cheeks flamed
rebellion, and her face, withal a pretty one, was set and determined.
Now, I was a man of the hill tribes, and she a mere woman of the city
folk, and though it is not my inclination to enter into details, it is my
pleasure to state that that bunch of poppies subsequently glorified the
bungalow and that the woman departed to the city unpaid. Anyway, they
were my poppies.

"They are God's poppies," sai