. . . grown till it stood up like hay, and there were such tall green weeds in the flowerbeds that Mother couldn’t believe they’d grown during the rain and thought they were some phlox she’d overlooked. The phlox itself was staggering with flowers, and all the lupin leaves held round water-drops in the hollows of their five-fingered hands. Greg said that they were fairy wash-basins. He also found a drowned field-mouse and a sparrow. He was frightfully sorry about it, and carried them around wrapped up in a warm flannel till Mother begged him to give them a military funeral. Jerry soaked all the labels off a cigar-box, and then burned a most beautiful inscription on the lid with his pyrography outfit. Part of the inscription was a poem by Greg, which went like this:

“O little sparrow,

Perhaps to-morrow

You will fly in a blue house.

And perhaps you will run

In the sun,

Little field-mouse.”

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