The blue gill-over-the-ground unmistakably belonged to her, for
it carpeted an unused triangular corner of her garden inclosed by
a leaning fence gray and gold with sea-side lichens. Its blue was
beautiful, but its pungent earthy odor--I can smell it now --
repelled us from the damp corner where it grew. It made us think
of graves and ghosts; and I think we were forbidden to go there.
We much preferred to sit on the sunken curbstones, in the shade
of the broad-leaved burdocks, and shape their spiny balls into
chairs and cradles and sofas for our dollies, or to "play school"
on the doorsteps, or to climb over the wall 1, and to feel the
freedom of the hill.

We were a neighborhood of large families, and most of us enjoyed
the privilege of "a little wholesome neglect." Our tether was a
long one, and when, grown a little older, we occasionally asked
to have it lengthened, a maternal "I don't care" amounted to
almost unlimited liberty.

The hill itself was well-nigh boundless in its capacities for
juvenile occupation. Besides its miniature precipices, that
walled in some of the neighbors' gardens, and its slanting
slides, worn smooth by the feet of many childish generations,
there were partly quarried ledges, which had shaped themselves
into rock-stairs, carpeted with lovely mosses, in various
patterns. These were the winding ways up our castle-towers, with
breakfast-rooms and boudoirs along the landings, where we set our
tables for expected guests with bits of broken china, and left
our numerous rag-children tucked in asleep under mullein blankets
or plantain-coverlets, while we ascended to the topmost turret to