t all.

You cannot say that of Mary's Meadow. Not to be a garden, it is one of
the most flowery places I know. I did once begin a list of all that
grows in it, but it was in one of Arthur's old exercise books, which
he had "thrown in," in a bargain we had, and there were very few blank
pages left. I had thought a couple of pages would be more than enough,
so I began with rather full accounts of the flowers, but I used up
the book long before I had written out one half of what blossoms in
Mary's Meadow.

Wild roses, and white bramble, and hawthorn, and dogwood, with its
curious red flowers; and nuts, and maple, and privet, and all sorts of
bushes in the hedge, far more than one would think; and ferns, and the
stinking iris, which has such splendid berries, in the ditch--the
ditch on the lower side where it is damp, and where I meant to sow
forget-me-nots, like Alphonse Karr, for there are none there as it
happens. On the other side, at the top of the field, it is dry, and
blue succory grows, and grows out on the road beyond. The most
beautiful blue possible, but so hard to pick. And there are Lent
lilies, and lords and ladies, and ground ivy, which smells herby when
you find it, trailing about and turning the color of Mother's "aurora"
wool in green winters; and sweet white violets, and blue dog violets,
and primroses, of course, and two or three kinds of orchis, and all
over the field cowslips, cowslips, cowslips--to please the
nightingale.

And I wondered if the nightingale would find out the hose-in-hose,
when I had planted six of them in the sunniest, cosiest corner of
Mary's Meadow.

For this was what I resolved to do, though I kept my resolve to
myself, for which I was afterwards very glad. I did not tell the
others because I thought that Arthur might want some of the plants for
our Earthly Paradise, and I wanted to put them all in Mary's Meadow.
I said to myself, like Bessy's great-aunt, that "if I was spared" I
would go next year and divide the roots of the six, and bring some
offsets to our gardens, but I would keep none back now. The
nightingale should have them all.

We had been busy in our gardens, and in the roads and bye-lanes, and I
had not been in Mary's Meadow for a long time before the afternoon
when I put my little trowel, and a bottle of water, and the six
hose-in-hose into a basket, and was glad to get off quietly and alone
to plant them. The highways and hedges were very dusty, but there it