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Poppies gleamed here and there amongst the wheat; the ditch was edged with flowers, brambles, nettles, sweet-brier, long prickly stems, broad shining leaves, blackberries and purple digitalis, all of which mingled their colours and various foliage and uneven branches, and crossed their shadows on the grey dust like the meshes of a net.
A sweet yet faintly pungent odour came on the light breeze over the next field a scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of the bean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hop-trefoil: honey sometimes has a flavour which resembles it. The hop-trefoil is a favourite crop for sheep, but Hilary said it was too soft for horses. The poppies were not yet out in the wheat.
It seemed as if I were lying in an endless field of poppies, with the notes of music echoing around me. Never did I have a more blissful vision. The awakening was all the more terrible. Only a few hours could have passed since I went to rest. Dawn was just appearing, and I rang for the old maid-servant who waited on me. An hour later Geheimrath Baum stood beside my bed.
Besides the assurance of extra pay from this source, Miss Higgins also intimated, as she conducted me to one of the tables, that if I was "able to make good" she would raise me to four dollars at the end of the week. Soon I was "slipping up" poppies under the instruction of Bessie, a dreamy-eyed young Jewess.
Wet June days, when the broad wings of the house rang with the sound of silver laughter and pattering feet, and echoed with music from the hall; and merry June days, when the laughter rippled among the lilacs, and pansies and poppies and sweet peas were outshone by bright gowns and brighter faces.
"How I abhor such things," said Bess; "the arrogant symbols of power." "They disgrace human nature," said I. "They shame the generous landscape," she said, "and they are abominable." "Piggish!" quoth I, hotly. "Down with them!" We looked forward to the coming of the poppies, did Bess and I, looked forward as only creatures of the city may look who have been long denied.
Then they went off 'n the brush t' find some nuts. There was only pines an' poppies an' white birch an' a few berry bushes on the island. They went t' the water's edge on every side, but there was nuthin there a squirrel ud give a flirt uv his tail fer. 'Twas near dark when they come back t' the cage hungry as tew bears. They found a few crumbs o' bread in the cup an' divided 'em even.
I have forgotten to mention the existence of a house above the poppy field, a squat and wandering bungalow in which we had elected to forsake town traditions and live in fresher and more vigorous ways. The first poppies came, orange-yellow and golden in the standing grain, and we went about gleefully, as though drunken with their wine, and told each other that the poppies were there.
Maturin's impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the solution herself. "Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!" "How stupid of me!" Insall echoed and Janet, bending over her weeding, made sure they had been in his mind all the while.
In the next years, men, forty deep, were to die in piles; hayricks of fields to become human hayricks of battle-fields; Belgium disemboweled, her very entrails dragging, to find all the civilized world her champion, and between the poppies of Flanders, crosses, thousand upon thousand of them, to mark the places where the youth of her allies fell, avenging outrage.
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