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Beneath them the ground was strewn with flowers, violets, and king-cups, poppies, red campions, and blue iris, while tall spikes of rose-colored foxgloves rose from among ranks of massed ferns, brake, hart's-tongue, and maiden's-hair, with here and there a splendid growth of Osmund Royal. To sight and smell, the hedge-rows were equally delightful.
"Let me show it to you. I can tell my story better there." They went through the broad gates of the park, across which the checkered sunbeams fell, where the deer browsed and king-cups and tall foxgloves grew on to the brook side where Dora had rested so short a time since to think of her new-found happiness.
They had understood one another over the king-cups, and it was no time to go farther. I need not tell of the embraces and tears between us in my chamber. They were but natural, after the time we had spent together, but at the end Millicent whispered: 'You will tell him all, Margaret!
But the second time that I came I thought there was something ominous about the field. Down there among the king-cups by the little shallow stream I felt that something terrible might happen in just such a place. I did not stay long there, because I thought that too much time spent in London had brought on these morbid fancies and I went on to the hills as fast as I could.
"Why, Come-Back hasn't got a button-hole!" exclaimed Judy and flew off to find one for him, Tim fast upon her heels like a collie after a dipping swallow. They raced down the banks where the golden king-cups grew in spendthrift patches and disappeared among the colonies of reeds.
"In Tom Tiddler's ground, picking up gold and silver," said Carey, pointing to the armsful of king-cups, cuckoo-flowers, and anemones, besides blue-bells, orchises, primroses, &c. "My poor child, it was a great shame to leave you, but they got me into the enchanted land and I forgot all about everything."
An old willow-tree, about whose roots I had often watched the king-cups growing, was now in the centre of a stream as broad as the Avon by our tan-yard, and thrice as rapid. The torrent rushed round it impatient of the divisions its great roots caused eager to undermine and tear it up. Inevitably, if the flood did not abate, within a few hours more there would be nothing left of the fine old tree.
'That is the first spot in England, said Claude, 'except, of course, "the meads of golden king-cups," where I have seen wild flowers give a tone to the colouring of the whole landscape, as they are said to do in the prairies of Texas.
By the side of the stream he stood and seemed very sad. Once or twice he looked up and down it mournfully, then he bent and looked at the king-cups, first one and then another, very closely, and shaking his head. For a long while he stood in silence, and all my old uneasiness returned, and my bodings for the future. And then I said, "What manner of field is it?" And he shook his head sorrowfully.
I emerged from the shadow of London into the gleaming sun; the bright green grass and the king-cups were flaming in the light, and the little stream was singing a happy song. But the moment I stepped into the field my old uneasiness returned, and worse than before. It was as though the shadow was brooding there of some dreadful future thing and a year had brought it nearer.
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