“There!” said Allen.

“There!” re-echoed the children.  “Oh mammy, mammy dear!  Is it not delicious?”

Carey held up her hand in silence, for a nightingale was pouring out his song close by; she listened breathlessly, and as it ceased she burst into tears.

“O mother!” cried Allen, “it is too much for you.”

“No, dear boy, it is-—it is-—only too beautiful.  It is what papa always talked of and would have so enjoyed.”

“Do you think he has better flowers up there?” asked Babie.  “I don’t think they can be much better.”

And without waiting for more she plunged down among the primroses and spread her little self out with a scream of ecstasy.

And verily the strange sense of rapture and enchantment was no less in the mother herself.  There is no charm perhaps equal to that of a primrose bank on a sunny day in spring, sight, sound, scent all alike exquisite.  It comes with a new and fresh delight even to those to whom this is an annual experience, and to those who never saw the like before it gives, like the first sight of the sea or of a snowy mountain, a sensation never to be forgotten.  Fret, fatigue, anxiety, sorrow all passed away like dreams in that sweet atmosphere.  Carey, like one of her children, absolutely forgot everything in the charm and wonder of the scene, in the pure, delicate unimaginable odour of the primroses, in debating with Allen whether (cockneys that they were) it could be a nightingale “singing by day when every goose is cackling,” in listening to the marvellous note, only pausing to be answered from further depths, in the beauty of the whole, and in the individual charm of every flower, each heavily-laden arch of dark blue-bells with their curling tips, so infinitely more graceful than their pampered sister, the hyacinth of the window-glass, of each pure delicate anemone she gathered, with its winged stem, of the smiling primrose of that inimitable tint it only wears in its own woodland nest; and when Allen lighted on a bed of wood-sorrel, with its scarlet stems, lovely trefoil leaves, and purple striped blossoms like insect’s wings, she absolutely held her breath in an enthusiasm of reverent admiration.  No one can tell the happiness of those four, only slightly diminished by Armine’s getting bogged on his way to the golden river of king-cups, and his mother in going after him, till Allen from an adjacent stump pulled them out, their feet deeply laden with mud.

They had only just emerged when the strokes of a great bell came pealing up from the town below; Allen and his mother looked at each other in amused dismay, then at their watches.  It was twelve o’clock!  Two hours had passed like as many minutes, and the boys would be coming home to dinner.

“Ah! well, we must go,” said Carey, as they gathered up their armloads of flowers.  “You naughty children to make me forget everything.”

“You are not sorry you came though, mother.  It has done you good,” said Allen solicitously.  He was the most affectionate of them all.