She knew, too, where to find the first 'crazy Betties,' whose large yellow flowers do not wait for the sun, but shine when the March wind scatters king's ransoms over the fields. These are the marsh marigolds: there were two places where she gathered them, one beside the streamlet flowing through the 'Mash,' a meadow which was almost a water-meadow; and the other inside a withy-bed. She pulled the 'cat's-tails,' as she learned to call the horse-tails, to see the stem part at the joints; and when the mowing-grass began to grow long, picked the cuckoo-flowers and nibbled the stalk and leaflets to essay the cress-like taste. In the garden, which was full of old-fashioned shrubs and herbs, she watched the bees busy at the sweet-scented 'honey-plant,' and sometimes peered under the sage-bush to look at the 'effets' that hid there. By the footpath through the meadows there were now small places where the mowers had tried their new scythes as they came home, a little warm with ale perhaps, from the market town. They cut a yard or two of grass as they went through the fields, just to get the swing of the scythe and as a hint to the farmer that it was time to begin. With the first June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced--the two usually coincide--and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and the mowers, now watching one and now the other. One of the haymaking girls was very proud because she had not lost a single wooden tooth out of her rake, for it is easy to break or pull them out. In the next field the mowers, one behind the other in echelon, left each his swathe as he went. The tall bennets with their purplish anthers, the sorrel, and the great white 'moon-daisies' fell before them. Cicely would watch till perhaps the sharp scythe cut a frog, and the poor creature squealed with the pain. Then away along the hedge to the pond in the corner, all green with 'creed,' or duckweed, when one of the boys about the place would come timidly up to offer a nest of eggs just taken, and if she would speak to him would tell her about his exploits 'a-nisting,' about the bombarrel tit--a corruption apparently of nonpareil--and how he had put the yellow juice of the celandine on his 'wurrut' to cure it. Then they pulled the plantain leaves, those that grew by the path, to see which could draw out the longest 'cat-gut;' the sinews, as it were, of the plant stretching out like the strings of a fiddle.