rose before me as clearly as though it had taken place that very day;
but how different everything looked, and how it had shrunk!
Was this the wide orchard that had seemed to stretch away,
it and the sloping field beyond, up to the gates of heaven?
I believe nearly every child who is much alone goes through a certain
time of hourly expecting the Day of Judgment, and I had made up
my mind that on that Day the heavenly host would enter the world
by that very field, coming down the slope in shining ranks,
treading the daffodils under foot, filling the orchard with their songs
of exultation, joyously seeking out the sheep from among the goats.
Of course I was a sheep, and my governess and the head gardener goats,
so that the results could not fail to be in every way satisfactory.
But looking up at the slope and remembering my visions,
I laughed at the smallness of the field I had supposed would
hold all heaven.

Here again the cousins had been at work. The site of my
garden was occupied by a rockery, and the orchard grass with all
its treasures had been dug up, and the spaces between the trees
planted with currant bushes and celery in admirable rows;
so that no future little cousins will be able to dream of celestial
hosts coming towards them across the fields of daffodils,
and will perhaps be the better for being free from visions
of the kind, for as I grew older, uncomfortable doubts laid
hold of my heart with cold fingers, dim uncertainties as to
the exact ultimate position of the gardener and the governess,
anxious questionings as to how it would be if it were they
who turned out after all to be sheep, and I who--? For that we
all three might be gathered into the same fold at the last never,
in those days, struck me as possible, and if it had I should