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I had seen at last that life was bigger than I, bigger than Maude, bigger than our individual wishes and desires. I felt as though heavy shackles had been struck from me. As I neared the house I spied my young doctor in the garden path, his hands in his pockets watching a humming-bird poised over the poppies.
Very soon within a month at most the creek which ran so joyfully to the great ocean yonder would have run altogether out of sight, leaving a parched and desolate watercourse in its place. The grass, now a vivid green, bespangled with brilliant poppies, would fade into premature age and ugliness. The trees would have assumed the dust- covered livery of summer. The birds would be mute.
By twelve forty-five your yard is carpeted with a strip of velvety turf, with a hedge of lilac or red may, or whatever happens to be in season, as a background, one or two cherry trees in blossom, and clumps of heavily-flowered rhododendrons filling in the odd corners; in the foreground you have a blaze of carnations or Shirley poppies, or tiger lilies in full bloom.
"I want to let them stew in their own juice for a bit. Have you come about Jon?" "You said you thought we ought to be told. Well, I've found out." "Oh!" said June blankly. "Not nice, is it?" They were standing one on each side of the little bare table at which June took her meals. A vase on it was full of Iceland poppies; the girl raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger.
No one would ever enter her door again. She might die peacefully in her own house, and no one would know until the walls crumbled to dust perhaps not even then. And Miss Evelina had a horror of a grave. She drew a long breath of the bitterness. The silken leaves of the poppies flowers of sleep had been crushed into this.
Captain Devot, who seemed in his dream to be one of the ladies' attendants, jumped from his horse to pick up the princesses' tears, which turned into little, rattling stones as they fell. With that, he waked. The princesses were gone "all but Victoire," he said, smiling, "she shall stay with us! The thunder was the thunder of German guns. The poppies were there and the blood was there.
There were erect groups and rows of hollyhocks; monkshood offered its clusters of blue caps; striped tulips and crimson poppies flourished in beds of generous shapes; delicate astors, rich dahlias, and neat little bachelors' buttons peeped in crowds from green freshnesses.
I stopped to view the scene, and the echo of vesper-bells came pealing gently over the miles, as the nodding poppies at my feet bowed reverently in the breeze. Villages in France viewed from a distance seem so restful and idyllic.
The bare brick paths were overrun with the green of growing things. Gray mounds of dirt grew vivid with the fire of poppies. Even the rain-soaked wood of the pea-frames miraculously was hidden in a hedge of green, over which ran riot the butterfly beauty of the lavender, and pink, and cerise blossoms. Oh, she did marvelous things that dull March day, did plain German Alma Pflugel!
This fine old ruin, in obedience to this instinct of jealous distrust, has but one entrance, and that so narrow that Sir John Falstaff would have been embarrassed to accept its hospitalities. In the shade of the broken walls, grass-grown and gay with scattered poppies, I looked at Toledo, fresh and clear in the early day.
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