“Is it a nice field?” said the poppy.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s a beautiful field—full of buttercups and daisies, and Mother lives there, and my cousins, and all Mother’s friends.”
“I don’t like buttercups and daisies and all your Mother’s friends,” said the poppy, “you must go away, little calf. And look!” she suddenly screamed, “you have trodden down all our dear friends, the corn-ears. Be off with you, at once, you wicked, wicked creature!” and she waved her leaves and shook so much with anger that the little calf was quite frightened and stumbled through the corn to his old hedge. But just as he was going to get through the hole he heard a gentle little voice at his feet, and looking down, saw another poppy. She was smaller than the other poppies, but she looked at him with her beautiful black eye and said, “Dear little calf, I have watched you looking through the hedge every day, and I love you and will come and live in your field. Take me gently in your mouth and pull me up.”
But just as he was going to do it the poppy cried out: “Quick, little calf, quick! I hear the farmer’s footsteps. If he finds you here he will beat you. You must go back without me.” And the little calf scrambled back through the hole in the hedge just as the farmer came up. Of course the farmer was terribly angry when he saw all his corn trampled down, and he sent some men to fill up the hole in the hedge at once, so that our little calf couldn’t get his dear poppy.
Now time went on and our little calf began to grow up, and he did all sorts of dreadful things, because he still loved everything that was red. He chased an old lady all down the lane because she was wearing a red shawl and he wanted to rub his head against it.
He ate up the paint-rag belonging to a man, who came to paint the cows in the cornfield, because it was covered with red paint. I don’t know why it was covered with bright red, because cows are not bright red, or buttercups and daisies either, are they? But still it was. And one day he even went into the farmer’s wife’s red sitting-room and sat on the floor with his head among the scarlet cushions on the sofa. After this everyone thought he must be mad, and the farmer’s sons called him “the crazy bull-calf.”
But all this time he never once forgot his dear poppy, and every evening he went down to the hole in the hedge and talked through it to her, until the autumn came and she went to seed. But when the next summer came, and he was almost a full-grown bull, he went down to his hole in the hedge, and there in his own field was a little red poppy, and he knew at once that it had grown up from one of the seeds of his own poppy, which the kind wind had carried and dropped in the cow-field. So all the summer he talked to his poppy and loved her, and she loved him and they were very happy. But when the autumn came the poppy knew she must die, and they were both very sad.
One day, when the young bull was lying down watching his dear poppy’s petals beginning to shrivel, and as he was trying to shield her from the sun, the Green Witch of the Fields came along. She stopped when she saw the two friends and the tears came into her eyes, because she was sorry for them. But she quickly dashed her tears away, because if a green witch ever drops her tears she loses all her power and becomes a sort of green stuff, which the wind carries away and drops on to the ponds. You must often have seen it there. Perhaps your nurse told you it was duckweed, but now you will know better, won’t you? And you must never try to walk on it because, you see, the witches have lost their power and cannot hold you up. Well, when the witch found that the two friends could nearly make her cry she was very frightened, and she said to herself: “I must do something for the poppy so that she can always be with her friend, because if I pass by when the poppy is dead, I shall certainly drop my tears, and that would never do.”
