One horde do I remember with keen regret.
Reconnoitring for a possible dog, they applied at the kitchen door
for "a drink of water, please." While they drank they were besought
not to pick any flowers. They nodded, wiped their mouths, and
proceeded to take themselves off by the side of the bungalow. They
smote the poppy field beneath my windows, spread out fan-shaped six
wide, picking with both hands, and ripped a swath of destruction
through the very heart of the field. No cyclone travelled faster or
destroyed more completely. I shouted after them, but they sped on
the wings of the wind, great regal poppies, broken-stalked and
mangled, trailing after them or cluttering their wake--the most high-
handed act of piracy, I am confident, ever committed off the high
seas.
One day I went a-fishing, and on that day a woman entered the field.
Appeals and remonstrances from the porch having no effect upon her,
Bess despatched a little girl to beg of her to pick no more poppies.
The woman calmly went on picking.
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