Mary's Meadow, and Other Tales of Fields and FlowersEwing, Juliana Horatia
General
Mary's Meadow, and Other Tales of Fields and Flowers
Ewing, Juliana Horatia
Conduct of life -- Juvenile literature; Gardening -- Juvenile literature
They feel so grown up with being so tall, that they are much more like
grown-up people turned into flowers than like children. I pretend my
doll is my child when I play with her; but I don't think I could
pretend a Sunflower was my child; and sometimes if Margery leaves me
alone with rather big Sunflowers, when it is getting dusk, and I look
up at them, and they stare at me with their big faces in the twilight,
I get so frightened for fear they should have got leave to go home at
night, _and be just turning_, that I run indoors as hard as ever I
can.
Two or three times I have got up early and gone out to see if any one
of them had no dew; but they have always been drenched, every one
them. Dew, thick over their brown faces, and rolling like tears down
their yellow glories. I am quite sure that I have never seen a
Sunflower yet that had had leave to go home at night, and Margery says
the same. And she is certain to know.
I had a very bad night, the night after Margery went away. I was so
terribly frightened with being alone in the dark. I know it was very
silly, but it was most miserable. I was afraid to go and wake Jael,
and I was more afraid of going to Grandmamma, and I was most of all
afraid of staying where I was. It seemed to be years and years before
the light began to come a little, and the noises left off creaking,
and dropping, and cracking, and moving about.
Next day I had a very bad headache. Jael does not like me when I have
headaches, because I give trouble, and have to have hot water and
mustard for my feet at odd times. Jael does not mind bringing up hot
water at night; but she says she can't abide folk wanting things at
odd times. So she does not like me when I have headaches; and when I
have headaches, I do not much like her. She treads so very heavily,
it shakes the floor just as ogres in ogre stories shake the ground
when they go out kidnapping; and then the pain jumps in my head till I
get frightened, and wonder what happens to people when the pain gets
so bad that they cannot bear it any longer.
That morning, I thought I never should have got dressed; stooping and
fastening things do make you so very bad. I was very late, and
Grandmamma was beginning to scold me, but when she saw I had got a
headache she didn't--she only said I looked like a washed-out
pocket-handkerchief; and when I could not eat any breakfast, she said
I must have a dose of rhubarb and magnesia, and as she had not got any
rhubarb left, she sent Jael up to Dr. Brown's to get some.
I did not like having to take rhubarb and magnesia; but I was very
glad to get rid of Jael for a bit, though I knew she would hate me for
having had to take a message at an odd time. It was her shaking the
room when she brought in the urn, and knocking the tongs into the
fender with her dress as she went by, that had made me not able to eat
any breakfast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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