JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 319 



turned to bright yellow with some tall flower that 

 looked like ragwort among the grasses. 



" What's happened to your field what is that 

 yellow weed in it ? " I said to my man. 



" Oh, that's only ' then he pulled himself up, 



thinking in time that I might be of the polite-eared 

 tribe. " That's a yellow flower," he finished. 



" Yes, I see it is," said I. " I'll have a look at 

 your flower after lunch." 



But the pleasure of luncheon, especially of the 

 omelettes my landlady made so wonderfully well, 

 caused me to forget all about it. 



About three o'clock I was out walking, half a 

 mile from the house, when I looked back from the 

 high ground at the village beneath me, and my eye 

 rested on the field about which we had talked that 

 morning. " Now what was it about that field ? ' 

 said I to myself, trying to recover something all 

 but forgotten. Then I remembered that at noon 

 it had appeared all a sheet of yellow colour and was 

 now of a uniform deep rather dull green ! It was 

 very odd, but I had no time to investigate until 

 the following morning when, on visiting the field 

 about ten o'clock, I saw it in all its glory, the 

 whole area resplendent with its multitudinous 

 crowded blooms of the dandelion orange-yellow, 

 the most luminous colour in Nature ; and but for 

 the wind that waved the tall plants like a field of 

 corn, mingling the vivid flower-tint with the green 

 beneath, the colour would have been too dazzling 

 in that brilliant sunshine. But it was the sunlight 



