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 watch for our ships coming in from sea.
For leagues of ocean were visible from the tiptop of the ledge,a tiny cleft peak that held always little rain-pool for thirsty birds that now and then stopped as they flew over,to dip their beaks and glance shyly at us,as if they wished to share our games.We could see the steeples and smokes of Salem in the distance,and the bill,as it desended,lost itself in mowing fields that slid again into the river.Beyond that was Rial Side and Folly Hill,and they looked so very far off!
They called it "over to Green's"across the river.I thought it was because of the thick growth of dark green junipers,that covered the cliff-side down to the water's edge;but they were only giving the name of the farmer who owned the land,Whenever there was an unusual barking of dogs in the distance,they said it was "over to Green's."That barking of dogs made the place seem very mysterious to me.
Our lane ran parallel with the hill and the mowing fields,and down our lane we were always free to go.It was a genuine lane,all ups and downs,and too narrow for a street,although at last they have leveled it and widened it,and made a commonplace thoroughfare of it.I am glad that my baby life knew it in all its queer,original irregularities,for it seemed to have a character of its own,like many of its inhabitants,all the more charming because it was unlike anything but itself.The hill,too,is lost now,buried under houses.
Our lane came to an end at some bars that let us into another lane,--or rather a footpath or cowpath,bordered with cornfields and orchards.We were still on home ground,for my father's vegetable garden and orchard were here.After a long straight stretch,the path suddenly took an abrupt turn,widening into a cart road,then to a tumble-down wharf,and there was the river!
An "arm of the sea"I was told that our river was,and it did seem to reach around the town and hold it in a liquid embrace.
Twice a day the tide came in and filled its muddy bed with a sparkling flood.So it was a river only half the time,but at high tide it was a river indeed;all that a child could wish,with its boats and its sloops,and now and then that most available craft for a crew of children--a gundalow.We easily transformed the spelling into "gondola,"and in fancy were afloat on Venetian waters,under some overhanging balcony,perhaps at the very Palace of the Doges,--willingly blind to the reality of a mudscow leaning against some rickety wharf posts,covered with barnacles.
Sometimes a neighbor boy who was the fortunate owner of a boat would row us down the river a fearful,because a forbidden,joy.
