Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/126

 tiny prickles stand on an end. This amusement, however, was the beginning and the cause of all my troubles in after-life.

One day, we were interrupted in the very midst of our sport, I remember all the little details of the scene, as if they had happened yesterday; shutting my eyes, and slightly rubbing the lids, I evoke the flushed faces of all my playmates.

It was on a warm spring day; we were in our favourite secluded nook, that grassy path, "with daisies powder'd over," between the hedgerows of gooseberry bushes, in the old fashioned garden. We had, on either side, a wall of glossy green leaves; over head the brown bunches of some old cherry trees, all covered with bunches of wild blossoms, and little greenish or browish leaflets, and as the fresh breeze wafted its scented breath through the entangled boughs—a snow storm of soft petals came fluttering, showering down; white butterflies chasing each other flitted around us. The blithe birds warbled or twittered on the branches and in the bushes; some in long amourous strains