eeped through the bushes on
every side, though the lane was so small and deep that hardly anybody
ever went there. So we sat down, and nurse took the clay out of the
bucket, and began to knead it with her hands, and do queer things with
it, and turn it about. And she hid it under a big dock-leaf for a minute
or two and then she brought it out again, and then she stood up and sat
down, and walked round the clay in a peculiar manner, and all the time
she was softly singing a sort of rhyme, and her face got very red. Then
she sat down again, and took the clay in her hands and began to shape it
into a doll, but not like the dolls I have at home, and she made the
queerest doll I had ever seen, all out of the wet clay, and hid it under
a bush to get dry and hard, and all the time she was making it she was
singing these rhymes to herself, and her face got redder and redder. So
we left the doll there, hidden away in the bushes where nobody would
ever find it. And a few days later we went the same walk, and when we
came to that narrow, dark part of the lane where the brake runs down to
the bank, nurse made me promise all over again, and she looked about,
just as she had done before, and we crept into the bushes till we got to
the green place where the little clay man was hidden. I remember it all
so well, though I was only eight, and it is eight years ago now as I am
writing it down, but the sky was a deep violet blue, and in the middle
of the brake where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered
with blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet,
and when I think of that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder
blossom seems to fill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the
glaring blue sky, with little clouds very white floating across it, and
nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the
beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse took out the
clay doll from the secret place where she had hidden it, and she said we
must 'pay our respects,' and she would show me what to do, and I must
watch her all the time. So she did all sorts of queer things with the
little clay man, and I noticed she was all streaming with perspiration,
though we had walked so slowly, and then she told me to 'pay my
respects,' and I did everything she did because I liked her, and it was
such an odd game. And she said that if one loved very much, the clay man
was very good, if one did