Outside London 



there were more of these butterflies; in summer, dry 

 summer, when the flowers seem gone and the grass 

 is not so dear to us, and the leaves are dull with heat, 

 a little colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort 

 of food ; every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the 

 spirit. I used to take my folding-stool on those long, 

 heated days, which made the summer of 1884 so 

 conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of 

 a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their 

 shadow was nearly as hot as the open sunshine; the 

 dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered them, 

 and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as 

 the sun poured it down. Dry, dead leaves dead 

 with heat, as with frost strewed the grass, dry, too, 

 and withered at my feet. 



But among the cabbages, which were very small, 

 there grew thousands of poppies, fifty times more 

 poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of the 

 cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals 

 falling wide open to the dry air. There was a broad 

 band of scarlet colour all along the side of the field, 

 and it was this which brought me to the shade of 

 those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was 

 in this way: they fetched for me all the white 

 butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, 

 hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a 

 constant stream and flow of them over the broad 

 band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur- 

 bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white 

 wings over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, 

 the flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the 

 dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my camp- 

 stool by a humble-bees' nest. I like to see and hear 

 them go in and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the 

 humble-bee is a favourite. That summer their nests 

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