For Mary's Meadow was a field with every quality to recommend it to childish affections.
And now I was banished from it, not only by the quarrel, of which we had really not heard much, or realized it as fully, but by my own bitter memories.

I cried afresh to think I should never go again to the corner where I always found the earliest violets; and then I cried to think that the nightingale would soon be back, and how that very morning, when I opened my window, I had heard the cuckoo, and could tell that he was calling from just about Mary's Meadow.
I cried my eyes into such a state, that I was obliged to turn my attention to making them fit to be seen; and I had spent quite half-an-hour in bathing them and breathing on my handkerchief, and dabbing them, which is more soothing, when I heard Mother calling me.
I winked hard, drew a few long breaths, rubbed my cheeks, which were so white they showed up my red eyes, and ran down-stairs.

Mother was coming to meet me.

She said--"Where is Christopher ?" It startled me.

I said, "He was with me in the garden, about--oh, about an hour ago; have you lost him?
I'll go and look for him." And I snatched up a garden hat, which shaded my swollen eyelids, and ran out.