CHAPTER VII.
And I now recall the impressions of springtime, all the fresh splendor of May; and I remember vividly the lonely road called the Fountain road.
(As I am endeavoring to put my recollections into some sort of order I think that at this time I must have been about five years old.) I was old enough at any rate to take walks with my father and my sister, and I went out with them this dewy morning.

I was in ecstasy to see that everything had become so green, to see the budding foliage and the tasselled shrubs and hedges.

Along the sides of the road the grass was all the same length, and the flowers in the grass with their exquisite mingling of the red of the geranium and the blue of the speedwell, made the whole earth seem a great bouquet.

As I plucked the flowers I scarcely knew which way to run; in my eagerness I trod upon them and my legs became wet from the dew--I marvelled at all the richness at my disposal, and I longed to take great armfuls of the flowers and carry them away with me.
My sister, who had gathered a sprig of hawthorn, one of iris and some long sheath-like grasses leaned towards me, and took my hand, and said: "You have enough for the present; you see, dear, that we could never gather all of them." But I did not heed, so absolutely intoxicated was I with the magnificence about me, the like of which I did not recall ever to have seen before.
That was the beginning of those almost daily excursions that I took with my father and sister, and that I kept up for so long a time (almost to my boarding-school days).

It is through them that I became so well acquainted with the surrounding country and with the varieties of flowers found there.