A Farmer’s Life 
subject of her child-fancies. What old nursery 
rhymes was she not going to teach him? Her 
own death, long before he was ready, intervened ; 
but amongst other things he was to learn her own 
child-names for the thumb and fingers—Tommy 
Tomkins, Mary Molkins, Long Sarah, Sukey 
Salkins, and Little Frisk-about. So the eigh- 
teenth century, it may be, was to pass a pleasant 
memory on to the twentieth. Of her old home- 
places Ann never tired of thinking. For instance, 
she told affectionately of a certain white rose, 
trailing over the trellis-work at the glass doors 
at the back of the farm sitting-room; then of 
the little grass-plot beyond, with a border of lilac 
round it. In this hedge was another rose, “a 
small cabbage-rose”’ no bigger over than a 
penny-piece, “ but as double . . . and smelt so 
sweet!” 
It may be this rose pleased her the more by 
being small, for that was another childlike trait 
in her—she liked the daintiness, as of toys, of 
small things. Only one flower appealed to her 
so Strongly as the pimpernel—the wild hearts- 
ease. She would often stop to exclaim about it: 
partly, I always thought, because it copied the 
cultivated flowers so faithfully yet in less than 
a quarter of their dimensions. ‘‘ Jack-jump- 
up-and-kiss-me”’ was her old country name 
for it. 
And out of her daily doings further memories 
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