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"What are these things?" holding up a few cuckoo-flowers that were half hidden like delicate shadows among the primroses. "You certainly show your liking by your knowledge. I thought every schoolboy knew the cuckoo-flower!" cried Adelaide, trying to seem natural and not bitter in her banter, and not succeeding. "I can learn. Never too late to mend, you know.
Here was a patch of vivid blue where the wild hyacinths were peering out from the edge of a wood which, farther in, was tinted with the delicate French-white of the anemones; the cuckoo-flowers rose with their pale lavender turrets of bloom above the hedgeside herbage, and the rich purple of the spotted orchis was on every side.
Torn pink ragged robins through whose petals a comb seems to have been remorselessly dragged, blue scabious, red knapweeds, yellow rattles, yellow vetchings by the hedge, white flowering parsley, white campions, yellow tormentil, golden buttercups, white cuckoo-flowers, dandelions, yarrow, and so on, all carelessly sown broadcast without order or method, just as negligently as they are named here, first remembered, first mentioned, and many forgotten.
Little Jean himself understands a great many things about the woods, the pools, and the mountains, for his little soul is a country soul. Catherine and Jean go roaming through the flowery meadows. As they go, Catherine gathers a nosegay. She picks blue centauries, scarlet poppies, cuckoo-flowers, and buttercups, which she also knows as little chicks.
Walking through the grass, and thinking of the dew and the beautiful morning sunshine, I scarcely noticed the quantity of cuckoo-flowers, or cardamine, till presently it occurred to me that it was very late in the season for cuckoo-flowers and stooping I picked one, and in the act saw it was an orchis the early purple.
"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."
The meadows were all sprinkled with the silver-mauve of cuckoo-flowers Shakespeare's "lady's smock"; the hills sloped upward under oaken saplings as yet too young for the stripping; the valley stretched winding landward beneath Sancreed. Above and far away stretched the Cornish moors dotted with man's mining enterprises, chiefly deserted.
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.
Then I got up and crossed a little brook and strolled along a narrow path that wound its way through a copse. The ground was starred with wood-anemones, oxlips, violets, cuckoo-flowers, and in damp places with green-golden saxifrage. I came to a small cottage that had pots of flowers in every window. I sat down while a hospitable old woman made coffee and chattered volubly in Flemish.
A moorhen's call comes from the hatch. Broad yellow petals of marsh-marigold stand up high among the sedges rising from the greyish-green ground, which is covered with a film of sun-dried aquatic grass left dry by the retiring waters. Here and there are lilac-tinted cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks than those that grow in the meadows.
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