Percia V. White.
THE SAND-BANK GARDEN.
“HOW MAMA USED TO PLAY.”
VIII.—THE OLD PASTURE.
I used to play a great deal out in the old pasture. It had a clump of cradle-knolls in it. A cradle-knoll is a little mound of moss.
On these mossy little cradle-knolls, checkerberry leaves and berries used to grow. How delicious those spicy young checkerberry leaves tasted! And we hunted those red plums as a cat hunts a mouse!
The pasture had two or three well-beaten paths in it, that the cows had made by their sober steady tramping back and forth from the barnyard lane to the growth of little trees and bushes and tender grass at the back. At sunset-time, two little barefooted girls would “spat” along those cool smooth winding paths after those cows.
As long as we kept in the paths our little feet were all right. But sometimes a clump of bright wild-flowers tempted us, and then two sorry little girls with thistle-prickles in their feet would come limping back. But out where the tender grasses grew there were no thistles, and such fun as hide-and-seek used to be among the bushes!
Sometimes we could not find the cows very readily; and then we would climb up on a smutty stump and call, “co’ boss! co’ boss!” until the woods rang.