Edith M. Patch

Holiday Meadow

T HERE is an open grassy field so crowded with flowers that the summer winds blowing over it are loaded with fragrance. A bobolink, gay in black and white and yellow, takes happy flights. He sings as he goes and his joyful music is like clear and sudden laughter. Then a meadowlark calls slowly a few sweet piping notes.

You do not need a map to tell you how to reach this place. It is along a pleasant country road that leads north or south or east or west. You can tell when you find it by the scent of the blossoms and by the songs of the birds and by the happy feeling you have when you look at it. Then you say, "Why, this must be Holiday Meadow!"—and sure enough it is!

Young dog, Sandy, knows one way to the meadow. He trots across a little brook on a rough bridge of old logs and planks. He looks back with a question and an invitation in his eyes. "Coming?" he seems to ask.

Sandy looks back with a question and an invitation in his eyes.

If you go with Sandy, he will be glad of your company for a while. Soon, however, he is likely to forget everything else in his hurry to find the nest of a mouse under a hummock of dry grass. Sandy would do well to be careful how he digs into that nest; for it may be that the mouse has moved out and that bumblebees have set up housekeeping there instead.

A crow flies scouting over the field. When he sees you he calls "Caw" several times in a way that seems to mean "Who comes here?"

Two little animals hear him and stand up on their hind legs while they look and listen and sniff. One is Wejack, the ground-hog, who presently slips into the doorway of his tunnel. The other is a rabbit with a quivery nose who decides to hide under the thorny tangle of blackberry branches by the pasture wall.

But Daisy, the young cow, does not heed the crow. She comes straight across the meadow to meet you. She likes boys and girls. When she was a little calf the children at Holiday Farm played with her and fed her. They named her "Daisy" for the white flowers with yellow centers that grow so thick in the field. Daisy, herself, does not care for these pretty blossoms. She much prefers the taste of grass.

The children named the young cow "Daisy."

Indeed Daisy takes little interest in many of the meadow affairs. She does not wonder how the frothy masses of bubbles come to be on the grass stems or what may be inside of them. She does not guess what the Black Swallowtail butterfly puts on the under side of a caraway leaf. She never watches a slender green grasshopper to see how he makes music with the edges of his wings. She does not find out what happens when . . .

The field across which Daisy comes to meet you is full of puzzles. The more answers you can find by hunting and watching the better you will enjoy your holiday in a meadow.