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Bevis looked up and saw that the field was full of cowslips yellow with cowslips. "I will pick every one," said he, "and carry them all back to my mother." "You cannot do that," said the swallow, laughing, "you will not try long enough." "I hate you!" cried Bevis in a passion, and flung his knife, which was in his hand, at the bird.
The sun shone still, but it shone low down and made such splendid shadows that we all walked about with grey giants at our feet; and it made the bright green of the grass, and the cowslips down below, and the top of the hedge, and Sandy's hair, and everything in the sun and the mist behind the elder bush which was out of the sun, so yellow so very yellow that just for a minute I really believed about Sandy's godmother, and thought it was a story come true, and that everything was turning into gold.
Toussaint smiled as he thought of the flower-strewn savannahs, where more blossoms opened and perished in an hour than in this dreary region all the summer through. He heard Mars Plaisir compelled to admit that he had never seen cowslips out of France.
At the same time the cowslips were most golden, the marsh was blue with flags, pink with smart weed, white and yellow with dodder, yellow with marsh buttercups having ragged frosty leaves, while the yellow and the red birds flashed above it, the red crying, "Chip," "Chip," in short, sharp notes, the yellow spilling music all over the marsh while on wing.
"And how did you know, sweetheart?" he asked, giving her an extra kiss. "Because I watched the flowers; and the dingle-bells and cowslips and cockle-shells are all withered and faded away. And did you not say that, God willing, when this happened you would come back to us?"
It was broad daylight now, a lovely May morning, such as generally called forth the maidens, small and great, to the meadows to rub their fresh cheeks with the silvery dew, and to bring home kingcups, cuckoo flowers, blue bottles, and cowslips for the Maypoles that were to be decked.
One evening she met him in the lane, as she returned from the meadow. She carried a bunch of flowers, with delicate blue and lilac bells, and asked him the name. "Them's Brandywine cowslips," he answered; "I never heard no other name. "May I correct you?" she said, gently, and with a smile which she meant to be playful.
There will be a breath of the cowslips about her, and in her eyes the soft wet of the English sky. Oh, you will be very glad to see her. The girl was well aware of her insincerity, but only dimly of her cruelty. She was drawn on by something stronger than her sense of honesty and humanity, a determination to see, to know, that swept these things away.
Thus even in summer Herr Schimmel was always on hand to help the doctor, nor had he cause to complain of being over worked, for the master seemed as fond of a walk in the open air as the assistant was averse to one, and when May came and the fruit trees were in blossom, when the delicate green leaves of the beeches burst from the bud, and the oaks shed their dry brown foliage in order to deck themselves out in young green, and the dandelions embroidered the fields with gold and then sprinkled them over with silver tissue, when the cowslips and daisies and violets and their spring companions in purple and yellow appeared, and the larches on the banks of the Pleisse turned green, when the nightingale sang and rejoiced in the woods, then Doctor Melchior Ueberhell rarely spent a sunny afternoon at home.
"Why, just this, sweetheart," returned the sailor gravely; "all the time that it takes the cowslips and dingle-bells and cockle-shells to sprout from the ground, and grow big and strong, and blossom into flower, and, yes to wither and die away again all that time shall your brothers and I sail the seas.
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