I said, “My regiment did not come home till May: I had spent this spring in the Crimea.”
“Ah! the spring flowers there, I have heard, are remarkably beautiful, much more so than ours.”
“Yes;” and as she seemed fond of flowers, I told her of the great abundance which in the peaceful spring that followed the war, we had noticed, carpeting with a mass of colour those dreary plains; the large Crimean snow-drops, the jonquils, and blue hyacinths, growing in myriads, about Balaklava and on the banks of the Tchernaya; while on every rocky dingle, and dipping into every tiny brook, hung bushes of the delicate yellow jasmine.
“How lovely! But I would not exchange England for it. You should see how the primroses grew all along that bank, and a little beyond, outside the wood, is a hedge side, which will be one mass of blue-bells.”
“I shall look for them. I have often found blue-bells till the end of October.”
“Nonsense!” What a laugh it was, with such a merry ring. “I beg your pardon, Doctor Urquhart, but, really, blue-bells in October! Who ever heard of such a thing?”
“I assure you I have found them myself, in sheltered places, both the larger and smaller species; the one that grows from a single stem, and that which produces two or three bells from the same stalk—the campanula—shall I give you its botanical name?”
“Oh, I know what you mean—hare-bell.”
“Blue-bell; the real blue-bell of Scotland. What you call blue-bells are wild hyacinths.” She shook her head with a pretty persistence. “No, no; I have always called them blue-bells, and I always shall. Many a scolding have I got about them when I used, on cold March days, to steal a basket and a kitchen knife, to dig them up before the buds were formed, so as to transplant them safely in time to flower in my garden. Many's the knife I broke over that vain quest. Do you know how difficult it is to get at the bulb of a bluebell?”
“Wild hyacinth, if you please.”