smells its perfume, Germaine's thoughts fly to the flowery
mountain paths, the haunt of children and bees, where she played so
often last year. Alfred too remembers the beautiful ways, and the woods,
and the springs, and the mules that climbed up and up on the brink of
precipices with a sound of tinkling bells.

ACROSS THE MEADOWS

[Illustration: 204]

AFTER breakfast Catherine! started off to the meadows with her little
brother Jean. When they set out, the day seemed as young and fresh as
they were. The sky was not altogether blue; it was grey rather, but of a
tenderer grey than any blue. Catherine's eyes are just the same grey, as
if made out of a bit of morning sky.

Catherine and Jean wander all by themselves through the fields.
Their mother is a farmer's wife and is at work at home. They have no
nurse-maid to take them, and they don't need one. They know their way,
and all the woods and fields and hills. Catherine can tell the time by
looking at the sun, and she has guessed all sorts of pretty secrets of
Nature that town-bred children have no suspicion of. Little Jean himself
understands a great many things about the woods, the pools, and the
mountains, for his little soul is a country soul.

Catherine and Jean go roaming through the flowery meadows. As they go,
Catherine gathers a nosegay. She picks blue centauries, scarlet poppies,
cuckoo-flowers, and buttercups, which she also knows as _little chicks_.
She picks those pretty purple blossoms that grow in hedgerows and are
called Venus' looking-glasses. She picks the dark ears of the milkwort,
and crane's-bill and lily of the valley, whose tiny white bells shed
a delicious perfume at the least puff of wind. Catherine loves flowers
because they are beautiful; and she loves them too because they make
such pretty ornaments. She is very simply dressed, and her pretty hair
is hid under a brown linen cap. She wears a cotton check pinafore over
her plain frock, and goes in wooden shoes. She has never seen rich
dresses except on the Virgin Mary and the St. Catherine in the parish
church. But there are some things little girls know directly they are
born. Catherine knows that flowers are becoming to wear, and that pretty
ladies who pin nosegays in their bosoms look lovelier than ever. So she
has a notion she must be very fine indeed now, carrying a nosegay
bigger than her own head. Her thoughts are as bright and fragrant as her
flowers. They are thoughts that c