Dreary patches of decaying cabbages, their leaves sodden and drab, were between the edge of the wood and the fences protecting the small back-gardens. Old broken pails and bundles of bean-sticks littered the allotments; sparrows chirped as they searched the backyards for crumbs. “This was a field for poppies,” he said softly. “Before the stems of wheat stiffened, while the awns and flags whispered softly in the air, the poppies were among the green corn like blood-drops. What untamed colours there were amongst the civilised wheat! The yellow charlock grew every year; we hated the wild mustard, but still it grew. Everywhere the alien creeps in, and hangs fiercely to life. Great big thistles held their spears and purple plumes higher than the grain with the yellow ragwort in August. And the moon daisies, sought by the moths at night. But you think that I am talking foolishly. Perhaps wild flowers are nothing to you.” He looked at me quickly, and in his face was youth. Yet he had said that he remembered the field before it became part of the suburb: that must have been many years ago. “Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air,” I quoted from old memory. “Ah! You have not forgotten!” With a wild poignancy he spoke. “I am remembering now.” He faced me so abruptly that the hair flung over his forehead. Then he spoke again, and my heart was heavy. “In the early morning the birds sang sweetly, and the air was pure. I used to creep down the stairs, holding my boots in my hand. The third step from the bottom creaked and had to be avoided. The cat asleep on its rug in the kitchen stirred and stretched and yawned as I opened the door, then curled and slept again. It’s funny how I remember things like that so vividly. When my boots were laced, I used to tiptoe to the door, draw the bolt and turn that creaking lock with its huge key, and then outside into the morning. Sometimes I came to this very place, listening to a nightingale, and his song then was not yearning as it was at night. I watched the warblers at their work of weaving cradles among the brambles. I had a friend in those days, a true friend, to whom I told all the things in my heart. Together we wandered and explored the big woods in the country.” He sighed, while a little wind stirred a leaf upon the oak tree above, a leaf alone among the guarded buds of next spring and the buff oak apples upon the twigs. The leaf made a faint risping as it spun and shook, and he looked up at it, and never had I seen a face so sad.