Puck of Pook's Hill

The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember ofMidsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeareone, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. Theybegan when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head on hisshoulders, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part whereBottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where hefalls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. Hewore a pointy-cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey's head out of a Christmas cracker-but ittore if you were not careful-for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and afoxglove wand.The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little mill-stream, carrying water to amill two or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay alarge old Fairy Ring of darkened grass, which was the stage. The millstream banks, overgrownwith willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient places to wait in till your turn came; anda grown-up who had seen it said that Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a moresuitable setting for his play. They were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer Night itself, but they went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and theytook their supper-hard-boiled eggs, Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope-with them.Three Cows had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one could hearall down the meadow; and the noise of the Mill at work sounded like bare feet running on hardground. A cuckoo sat on a gate-post singing his broken June tune, 'cuckoo-cuck', while a busykingfisher crossed from the mill-stream, to the brook which ran on the other side of the meadow.Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass