GREAT beds of poppies grew at the end of the cottage at Hollyhock
Place. To make poppy blossoms into dolls is the easiest thing in the
world. All you have to do is to turn down the soft, silky petals, tie
a blade of grass round them, and there you have a poppy maid, all
finished and growing on a stem—a real flower fairy. There is a small
green seed pod inside, you know, and that is the poppy maid’s head.
After making a number of these without breaking their stems the
children often laid a cucumber, or radish baby in the poppy bed and
sang to it a soothing lullaby—one they had made up themselves. Perhaps
they had a little help—I cannot say as to that.
Poppies are the flowers that bring sleep you know.
Before long, the poppy maids would fade away and others would take
their places. The dead ones were quietly buried near their friends,
and soon after, at sunset, their colors were seen in the sky, as were
those of many dead and gone, hollyhock and morning-glory ladies. None
of these ever lived to be very old.