The Wild Flower Bok For pare Peyple ret Alice Lounsb erry New York State Callege of Agriculture At Cornell University Bthaca, N. B. Dibrary The wild flower book for young people, PLATE V.—WHERE WE FOUND LITTLE TRUDY ar a o The | Wild Flower Book ( for Young People By Alice Lounsberry Author of ‘A Guide to the Trees,’ “‘A Guide to the Wild Flowers,’ ‘* Southern Wild Flowers and Trees,”” ete. New York Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers X 2; iy QK Si LSB CopyRIGHT, 1906, sv FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY This Edition published in August, 1906 AL rights reserved 299770 To MY MOTHER WHOSE LOVE OF CHILDREN AND FLOWERS LIVES ON THROUGH MEMORY PREFACE THE little girl who tells this story goes from the city to live in the country with her grandmother. There, through the spring, summer, and the cool, crisp autumn, she roams through woods, meadows and swamps, and sees many things that pique her curiosity. Most often it is the wild flowers she wishes to know about; although she notices the birds, the trees, and even a bullfrog. She sees that the sky changes, and wonders why the dewdrops cling so long to blades of grass. In her own way this little girl writes about these things, using neither botanical terms nor dificult words. The flowers she finds are the ones common throughout the northeastern States of her country, where hundreds of them bloom every year near large cities. Now, however, the rarer flowers are moving to places far away from men’s dwellings, because they have been picked so much by those who think little of their preservation. She learns that wild flowers have tender feelings, and that they resent cruel treatment, even though they can- not complain in the language of children. This PREFACE little girl loves the flowers dearly, and listens eagerly to stories told her about them by a boy named Tommy. Indeed, she makes friends with girls and boys in the country, and Dame Nature guides her by various paths to the heart of many secrets. In this book there are pictures showing a num- ber of wild flowers, and also these bright-eyed children as they played among them out-of-doors. On some days another author besides the little girl went with the children, tramping across fields and by deep streams. They told her, too, tales about the fun they had together, and showed her places where certain wild flowers bloom each year. They helped her in many ways, and for their com- panionship, and gay chatter, she now sends her most loving thanks. A. EL, CONTENTS CHAPTER I II III IV ‘Vv VI VII VIII IX “ XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX I go.to the Country i ow om om. ow Early Flowers and the Visit of Francis .. ‘The:Real: Spring and Little Trudy Violet Mysteries. . .« «© © mw ‘The°Spirit of Secret Valley . . x “What Sallie found out about Bloodroots . “Answers to Francis’s Letter ee uel. cites Jack-in-the-Pulpit and his Friends «: “When Dogwood blooms . . » ~ “More Flowers, and why Tommy felt Ashamed ~ . .© 2. «© « «© ‘Columbine’s Glory . . .© « « The Large Yellow Lady’s Slipper ‘Old: Adam’s Gaiety . . ww +» © The: Find by the Road, and Little Pipes . ‘Wild Geranium and Poor Robin’s Plantain Philip hears about Three New Flowers ‘The First Day in June . .« ww ‘Little Trudy’s Blue Flowers . « =| Professor Bonn’s Letter to Philip . .~ a ae PAGE I 8 17 22 29 34 41 47 53 59 66 73 80 86 92 99 106 113 119 vi CHAPTER XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVIII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII XXXVIII XXXIX XL CONTENTS PAGE On Wild Roses Highway. ~. «. 125 Philip goes for a Bouquet of Meadow-Sweet e @. 8 BOLBT When Berries are Ripe « os « 137 Letters from Francis and Sallie. 9. 144 Helping weed the Pasture . secs St. John’s-wort Flowers and Witches’ Work ee Me RLS et. E58 When Tommy and his Father were Afield So vito BO Ae. “wy. EOS Philip’s Hunt 5 ‘ s * 19S The Picnic on Old Adam . .~ . 178 White Flowers and a Mischievous Fairy S> cleo se cee amo 286 Finding Odd Flowers. . «2. «© 193 Midsummer ~ «© © © © «& 200 The Drive to Great Rock. . . 207 Philip finds Flowers but no Girl... 214 In Miss Amelia’s Meadow. . . 220 The Cardinal Flower. . «© . 227 Another Part of the Stream. . . 233 To Indian Monument. .« » «. 239 Flowers that have escaped « . 3 . 247 Since Autumn has come . . . 254 Joe Pye-Weed, the Strange Girl and Others i> hae Se ee ROT CONTENTS vii CHAPTER PAGE XLI The Studio Favorite and Turtle-Heads . 268 XLII Blue Flowers that come Late. . . 274 XLIII Indians in the Goldenrod . « «. « 281 XLIV Concerning Asters . . « w «+ 287 XLV Real Autumn . 2 6%) ow) ee 293 XLVI Nutting Time . . . «© © © 299 XLVII The Dream o Mel cel. Bi Gat cal B06 PLATE II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIV XV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS : FACING PAGE “He was going up a tree when I saw him firsts Se. cto. ig) ak, Ge RM a OF “Tt is-like them in looks and yet a little different? . .« . «2. .« «w +» 10 Dutchman’s Breeches . « » © © I2 Early .Saxifrage . . e oe a8 Where we found Little Trudy - Frontispiece “After. we had started” . ‘ 7 24 Early Blue Violet, Downy Yellow Violet, Common Blue Violet ce. ee. 26 Secret-Valley . |. 6 w « « «+ 30 The Spice Bush 1 m te, wee Wha ge we “32 Bloodroot : “ echt, te Ween CA 36 “ ‘His - ears- were ea up and he looked ‘surprised: to see me’ Qn dig), Gg 14? OS Spring. Beauty - ... ect a AD The Large-flowered uae & oe cer Sad Jacks in the spring woods . . « + 48 Sallie and Dogwood . ~~ «© - ~ 56 IK x PLATE XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV. XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE “They were woven together’” ; ~. 64 Wild Columbine . » «© «© «+ 68 “There was only one flower” ». « 76 Rock Pinks . .« »« « w« « 80 Good-bye to the Rock Pinks. « « 84 Pink Azalea. 1 mm « ww m 86 Naked Broom-rape, or “Pipes” « m= 90 Wild Geranium and the White Fern . 94 Poor Robin’s Plantain. ». ww + 96 The True and the False Solomon’s Seals iw: & (@ (6 te = = 100 False Lily-of-the-Valley . +.» « 1 104 “Little Trudy was in the swamp” « I10 The Larger Blue Flag. -« «© w II4 Philip stops on the way by Rocks like Steps) sow 0! CUCU TRO The Four-leaved Silkweed . . .« 122 Wild Rose . . «© «© w © 126 Talking to Wild Rose. . « « 128 Meadow-sweet 8 wwe 132 When Gentlemen meet. «+ «© « 134 Tommy’s Seat . «.« « « « 140 “First he ate one, then he gave me ONG” «6 &. {6 oe @ oo 4 9Q2 “She stops to pick Daisies on her way home? e -s) ow. % - 148 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi PLATE FACING PAGE XXXVIII “Tommy lay down in the grass’... 154 XXXIX “A few Daisies and Buttercups and Black-eyed Susans in my basket” . 156 XL “The witch held out a piece of St. John’s-wort? . «3 eww 164 XLI Spreading Dogbane .» ww ww « 166 XLII The Strange Girl among the Wild Lilies iy. com HR Cal cla, HeskgO: XLIII Starry Campion. . ow owe TK XLIV Bulb-bearing Loosestrife . . . 176 XLV Wild Bergamot . . . « . 184 XLVI The Ghost Flower and its Neigh- bors 3 4 « & & & 2 186 XLVII Prince’s Pines and the Queer Flower 190 XLVIII Rattlesnake-weed . . « «© -«» 194 XLIX The Monkey Flower. . . .« 198 L Sallie in a Bush of Sweet Melilot - 200 LI The Downy False Foxglove « +» 204 LIT “A girl was lying among the pink blossoms”... Ow OetiSCT LIII ‘He sat down among the flowers” . 218 LIV Moth Mullen . ww «. © « 224 LV Simpler’s Joy . «© w « ~» 226 LVI The Cardinal Flower. . . « 228 LVII “He walked back by the little path” . 230 LVIII Butter and Eggs. «© . « « 234 Xil PLATE LIX LX EX Lx LX LXIV LXV LXVI LXVII LXVIII LXIX TAR LXxi LXXII LXXIII LEXY LXXV LXXv1 LXXVII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGB “Kate Hood walking through Purple-spiked Loosestrifes” Wild Phlox and Rubber Plant Everlasting, or Sweet Balsam Roadside Thistles . Joe Pye-weed. .~ « - Milfoil and Boneset . «& Wild Carrot. « . Turtlehead . Great Lobelia. . . The Old Rock” . . Goldenrod . Indians in the Goldenrod Michaelmas Daisy . SS New England Aster and Blue Aster Little Trudy with Wild Sunflowers Pokeweed Witch-hazel 4 The Large-leaved Holly The School-house in the Woods the - 242 . 248 » 254 . 258 . 262 - 264 . 270 “B92 - 276 . 278 . 282 . 286 . 288 . 290 . 294 5206 - 302 + 304 « 310 The Wild Flower Book for Young People CHAPTER I I GO TO THE COUNTRY I KNow nothing about this beautiful country where we have come to live; only that it is away from the city and the friends who went to school with me there. It is chilly and no leaves have come out yet on the trees. But then it is only March. Our house here is not nearly as pretty as the one we have left in town. My Grandmother calls it forlorn; so it must be the wild flowers when they are in bloom, and the country round about that she thinks I will learn to love so dearly. When Grandmother was a little girl no older than I am she lived in this house; and still remem- bers a great many places where wild flowers grew, and birds built their nests. She can tell wonderful stories about flowers, and how they have ancestors and relatives just like the people in history. One thing already makes me happy here which in the city I rarely saw at all, and then only as a roof over the high buildings. ‘That is the blue sky. In the evening it is filled with shining stars. From our veranda on clear nights we can see be- sides that it is far away and very wide; and I have often wondered if some one up in the heavens lit Ir 2 I GO TO THE COUNTRY thousands of little candles, and then went about snuffing them all out before we awoke in the morn- ing. When IJ asked Grandmother if this could be true she smiled, but said that I was not thinking in just the right way about the stars. They are always there, she told me, only we cannot see them until it grows dark. Although it is still too cold for wild flowers to open, ever so many little birds are piping and singing. Early in the mornings they fly to a tree near my window, and there they make so many chirps and give such long, sweet calls to each other that I spring out of bed to run and look at them. I see birds with blue backs, and many that are all brown, and some are smaller than the others. Numbers of them have bits of straw or grass in their mouths, and this makes me feel sure they are nodding and whispering about building nests. Just below the side of our house there runs a stream. One day on its bank I saw an odd look- ing creature. In parts he was as green as grass, his eyes bulged out, and his voice sounded as though he had a very bad cold. I knew at once that he was a bullfrog, but I did not know, until Grandmother told me, his reason for croaking. It was because spring had come. I often saw him after this, but he usually jumped right in the stream when he heard my footsteps. He was not sociable. Another day a little farther along the stream I GO TO THE COUNTRY 3 I met a boy, and later we became real friends. He was going up a tree when I saw him first, and I shouted to him to know the name of his dog, who didn’t seem to like my being there. He quickly slid down the tree, calling, ‘‘ Here Peter, here Pete.’ I asked him his own name, and he said it was Tommy, that his father’s name was Tom, and their cat’s Old Tom. This I thought very strange, as the cat is younger than either he or his father. Tommy said he had a notion a crow was begin- ning to build in the tree he was just shinning up, and that he wanted to mark it, so as to get one of the young birds to tame. He said that he could do this any day though. He seemed to know that I was the little girl who had come to live in the old house, for he told me his father knew Grandmother, and that he lived in the next place. It was Saturday, so he wasn’t at school. Tommy told me that very morning that he loved wild flowers, and that he knew most of the places where they grew. These places he calls “bunks,” and those of very rare flowers he seldom talks about to anybody. But he is not hunting much for flowers now, it is too early; he tries to see little green things, like tiny spears of grass, or bits of moss just the color of emeralds. Besides, he is keeping his eyes open for the Skunk Cabbage. Just as soon as the days are really warm I shall have little time for dreaming; there will be so 4 I GO TO THE COUNTRY many things for me to find out—I mean real secrets about the wild flowers. Perhaps I shall have adventures while hunting for them. When Grandmother was a girl she says she thought life in the spring was most exciting. It is very fortunate that I called out to Tommy that morning, for he often comes to see us now, and Grandmother says that he is “ reliable.” Yesterday we walked down the side of the stream to where little low trees were leaning over its edge, and looking as though they might take a tumble any minute. There were no more leaves on them than on any of the other trees, but along the sides of their twigs little buds were sticking out as soft and gray as the back of a pussy. I ought to have known that these were Pussy Wil- lows, for I had often seen them for sale, tied in bunches; only here they looked so much softer and grayer, holding tight to the bare tree. ‘Tommy finds fewer of them every year, because they are picked by many people to sell; and some day he thinks they will only dare to peep out miles and miles away from houses and trolleys. “So you found Pussy Willow to-day?” Grand- mother said in the evening. ‘‘ Next you will come telling me all about Skunk Cabbage.” We had seen this plant the very first day it pushed a spike of green through the ground; Tommy was showing me the swampy place where it grows every year. Since then, as we told Grand- PLATE I.—‘HE WAS GOING UP A TREE WHEN I SAW HIM FIRST” I GO TO THE COUNTRY 5 mother, we had watched the spikes unfold until they looked like little green and purple hoods. In- side each one there stands a piece like a stick with hundreds of tiny florets growing about its sides. The hoods, Tommy says, are just to protect these florets from cold and wind. He laughed when I picked one of them, and then threw it down because it smelled like a mustard-plaster. “There'll soon be other flowers much better than that to pick,” he said, “only by the time they’re here Skunk Cabbage will have lost its hoods, and its great green leaves will begin to make this swamp look like a cabbage-patch.” Each day in the country now there are so many surprises that it seems quite as though we had come to live in fairy land, only things don’t van- ish here when we awake in the morning. Every- thing is real. At last there is one beautiful little flower above the ground. This morning Tommy took me out to look for it. Its name is Hepatica, or some- times he calls it Blue Eyes. He had picked four white, three blue, and a pink one before I had found any. His eyes are sharp. But when I pushed aside some dried leaves with a stick I also spied a few, full open and blinking in the sun- shine. The Hepaticas are such dear little flowers. They grow in groups together and don’t seem to mind having no other playmates than dead leaves. I wondered if they felt something as I did when 6 I GO TO THE COUNTRY Grandmother gave me my fur collar and muff at Christmas. For all along their stems, and on the green leaves under the flowers, there is surely a soft and silky fur. I was so curious to know if it made them feel warm that I slipped my finger all around their stems, thinking perhaps I might find out for myself if they were warmer than the dead leaves. Tommy says it is all a made-up story that flow- ers ever speak, but sometimes I have my own thoughts about them, and like to play I hear the Hepatica saying: “Once there was a little girl who was grieved when she saw me; grieved because I wasn’t a Violet. She had lived all her life in the city, and thought that the Violet was the first spring flower. She didn’t know that the Violet could never come out as early as I; for its stems are covered with no warm fuzz, and its leaves have not stayed green, and snuggled about it, and kept it warm all winter. When the little girl found all this out she called me very brave, and loved me for my own sake. She might have stayed with me a long time in the wood, only she wore a little ticking thing on her dress, and whenever she looked at that she said it was time for something.” Just then I looked at my watch. It was surely time to go back to Grandmother, so I up and ran home, making a great noise in the dried leaves. In the evening Grandmother told us that Mr. I GO TO THE COUNTRY 7 Hamilton Gibson, a very great botanist, had some- times found these little blossoms as early as the last of February. Since then Grandmother showed Tommy and me how to make a bird’s nest basket with moss and Pussy Willow. This was not difficult to do, for Tommy had a little basket that some figs had come in, almost the shape of a bird’s nest. First Grandmother laid moss all around its outer side, and fastened it well with a needle and long black thread; and the twigs of Pussy Willow were so soft that she could bend them to make the handle of the basket. Afterward we slipped more of them in and out through the moss, so that they ‘|might imitate tiny twigs, bits of straw, and the strings that birds carry when nest building. We sprinkled it then with water, thinking it would keep fresh for many days. When all this was done we laid our bunches of Blue Eyes in the center, making believe they were eggs. Then Tommy asked: ‘“ What next?” CHAPTER II EARLY FLOWERS AND THE VISIT OF FRANCIS WHEN I lived in the city, I never knew that great, gray looking trees were ever covered with tiny flowers, yet in the country in April this is plain for any one to see. All the little twigs have now a lively look; but by far the prettiest blossoms are hanging from the Red Maples. No one could ever count them, there are so many; and they are far too high for me to reach. Still I can see that they are something like tiny, crimson bells with very many yellow clappers. From a distance they make the trees look as though pink clouds were paying them a visit. ‘Tommy says he always keeps half an eye toward the sky when hunting for flowers, and I feel sure this is how he learns so much about tree blossoms. There is no longer any need to push aside dried leaves when hunting for Hepaticas. They stand up boldly for any one to see. [I think that per- haps they were lonely in the woods, for just a few days ago some other little flowers came be- side them. Tommy was at school and Grand- mother was busy when I found them first, so if any one helped me it was Tommy’s dog, Peter, although his master still thinks he was just turning out some snake hole. 8 THE VISIT OF FRANCIS 9 For some time Peter didn’t like our coming to live in the old house which all his life long had been closed; but now that he has grown used to us, he runs and plays with me just as he does with Tommy. Peter is a great hunter, and knows every wood- chuck hole in this county. His legs are long, and he can run very fast. The morning he went alone with me into the woods he trotted on, always a little way ahead, and then turned around some- times and barked to ask if I were coming. I thought perhaps he had something to tell me, and twice I called him back and said: ‘‘ What is it, Peter; what is it?”’ But he only wagged his tail and ran on. When I stopped to pick some Hepaticas, he came back of his own accord, looking over the ground for something. Then suddenly he put his nose in a hole and began tossing up the earth and leaves in a hurry. I ran to see what he could be doing, and there just by his shaking head were four little white flowers. Their names I now know were Wind-flowers, or Wood-anemones. Just one delicate blossom grew alone at the top of each stem, and they were not solidly white, for two were tinted with blue, and the one on the tallest plant was quite pinkish. The green leaves underneath the flowers were divided into five, sharp, little parts; and those that were not quite open had a pinched-together look. 10 THE VISIT OF FRANCIS These flowers were rocking to and fro in such a gale of wind that it seemed strange they were not torn from the earth and carried away. I won- dered for some time if the wind sought them out to play with, and if this could be why they were called Wind-flowers. Indeed Grandmother says there is an old story that Father Wind blows them open, and then blows their petals away, so it is quite reasonable that they should bear his name. I think perhaps flowers love the wind just as much as they do the sun. The wind is so lively; it hardly keeps still a minute. Sometimes it makes sounds that are low and sweet, and it touches the flowers gently; or else it is very mischievous, toss- ing dead leaves in the air, and carrying the flowers’ pretty leaves away. But when it is really angry, it howls and roars and bends their stems almost double. The wind, though, is very kind to the flowers. After they are wet by the rain, it blows against them, and dries them quite nicely; and when their seeds are ready to be sown, the wind lifts them up and carries them off, and puts them down in some little bed of earth where they can grow. I’m sure now that the wind is wise and useful, although when I lived in the city I thought it only cared to blow my hat off. Now so many Wind-flowers are blooming in some places that I must take long jumps so as not to step on them. What also seems curious to me « LNOUMATAT WILLIT V LYA UNV SNOO'l NI WILL GNIT SI LL. LV ld THE VISIT OF FRANCIS 11 is that another little flower has come by the Wind- flowers. It is like them in looks, and yet it is a lit- tle different, and is called Rue-anemone. At the top of its stem it sends out little, white flowers, all very much like the one blossom of the Wind-flowers. Its green leaves are round, and notched in three places, and very thin and smooth. It is a cousin of Wind-flower’s, so perhaps it is not strange they should look so much alike. One beautiful, little company of them grows in a clump of thick moss; and two Maidenhair Ferns stand up over their heads. Perhaps they wish to shade the flowers. The part of the woods where we find Rue-ane- mone belongs to Tommy’s father. He wishes no one to pick it, because, he says, it is very easy to drive it away even from places that suit it well. It vanishes when it is torn up by the roots, or abused, and only a great deal of coaxing will bring it back again. It is like the buffaloes that Grandmother has told us about. Years ago, she says, there were many of them in the great west of this country. But then people lassoed them, and killed them for their skins in such numbers that they left the places near where white men were making cities and towns; and after a while there were only a few of them left anywhere. So it is a pity to take Rue-anemone from its cool, shady home. Everything there helps to make it beautiful, even the insects, and a bright, little lizard 12 THE VISIT OF FRANCIS I saw not far away. And when it is picked its leaves curl up soon, and it dies. One day Tommy found quite a large bunch of Maidenhair Fern that had been taken from their woods, and thrown down later by the roadside. This had been done by some one because it was fading; some one who cared more for picking flowers for the sake of picking than for the flowers themselves. In the rock’s crevices, and in dry, sunny spots of the woods, there is still another flower bloom- ing. Tommy calls it Dutchman’s Breeches. It is white, tinted a little with yellow, and shaped quite differently from any other wild flower that I have seen. Just now I cannot think of anything exactly the shape of these little flowers. Some people think they look like Soldier’s Caps, and others call them White Hearts. They are not a bit like Dutchman’s Breeches, unless these should be closed at the bottoms, and turned upside down. It is easier, I think, to describe the leaves, for they are cut into many slender parts, and look like ferns. After Tommy had found the first Dutchman’s Breeches that opened we tried to think of another and prettier name for them. My choice was Butterflies’ Banners. No one knows exactly the shape of such things, but perhaps butterflies could think of nothing better for banners that these lit- tle flowers. Tommy had found them by the great SHHOUAAd SNVNHOLAG— II @aLv Td a 2 Ne 8 Di nes E N@uue:o HALE pl AN OS * \ : 7 J \ 4 ; aN aN ; é v THE VISIT OF FRANCIS 13 rock in the woods he calls Adam, because it is so old. That very afternoon my cousin Francis came from his home in New England to visit us. He is a fine boy, just Tommy’s age. When he jumped from the carriage, I saw that he had a little box in his hand, and once he was going to give it to Grandmother; but she had a visitor just then, so he kept it by him closely. When I introduced Tommy to him, saying that he loved flowers, Francis threw the box down on the table, and put his head back, as much as to say: ‘“‘ Match that if you can.” In the box there was a little bunch of Trailing Arbutus, or Mayflower. Its scent was like the dew on the ground, only far sweeter. Of course Tommy knew he could not hope to find it near his home, and he said so at once. Then Francis said we had no other flower half so pretty. Now Tommy is very proud of the flowers that grow around here, and he felt angry. He said nothing then to Francis, but ran out and brought in the few Dutchman’s Breeches he had picked in the morning. “ Tsn’t that a more beautiful flower?” he asked. “‘ Look at its fern-like leaves and see how curious itis,” “No,” said Francis. “You think those stiff leaves of your flower pretty?” asked Tommy. 4 THE VISIT OF FRANCIS ‘The flower is pretty,” said Francis. ‘‘ This flower has a particular insect that visits it,” argued Tommy. “This flower was the first to welcome the Pil- grims to this country,” argued Francis. “This flower—” said both together. It was fortunate then that Grandmother came back to the room, since Tommy and Francis were growing red in the face. “‘ My boys,” she said, ‘‘each flower is beautiful. Francis, you may not know that once in New York State the Arbutus grew in many places, even close to the largest cities. It snuggled up against wooded banks, and spread thick patches of glossy green leaves, and pink-faced blossoms in sandy spots where the sun shone brightly. It was so sweet, and so much more charming than its com- panions that people from far and near picked it in great quantities. Many took it also and tied it in bunches to be sold on the streets. “Even the people who thought they loved it paid little heed to its welfare. They picked it most carelessly, tearing it up from the ground by its slender, running rootlets. The Arbutus blossom, as you know, has but a short stem of its own, and to pick it with care is slow work. But even so, the plant has been a long time growing, and when its young shoots are torn off more than a year’s labor is destroyed. “So it was that the patches about here became THE VISIT OF FRANCIS 15 smaller each year, and lost besides their lusty, vigorous look, until now they have entirely van- ished. Tell this story, Francis, to those about your home, so that the same thing may not happen in the land of the Pilgrims.” Grandmother spoke most seriously. Francis answered that near his home the Arbutus spread such large sheets of bloom over the ground that people might pick for a hundred years and still it would be there. Again Grandmother cautioned him to pick it with great care. Then Tommy, who had really been still for a long time, said: ““ Dutchman’s Breeches is vanishing. Not be- cause it is much torn up by the roots; its bloom is easier to pick than that of the Arbutus, and of course it does not spread itself by running under the ground. It is because most girls and boys gather as many flowers as their two hands can hold, and never think of leaving a few on each plant to be fertilized by insects, and to form and sow seed.” “Indeed,” said Grandmother, ‘‘ we should never prevent plants from attending to that mat- ter. It is one of Nature’s great laws.” Francis and Tommy asked Grandmother many questions about how flowers make their seed, and about their friendship with the bees and butter- flies. She said she would answer them all an- other time, because then we were soon going to have dinner. It was so cool in the evening that we sat by the 16 THE VISIT OF FRANCIS wood fire in the library, and Francis told Grand- mother and me a story about a Ghost-flower. He thinks I may find it here in our own woods, al- though there is no use looking for it before July. If I find it then, I’ll remember to repeat the story. CHAPTER III THE REAL SPRING AND LITTLE TRUDY, IN the sunshine now it is really warm. The gardener has given up saying that there may yet come a frost to catch the impatient blossoms, and Grandmother no longer urges me to wear my win- ter coat. Tommy seems excited by these real spring days, and has hardly time to talk with Peter. He is busy keeping watch on the crow’s nest, and many little flowers which, he says, are as timid as fairies, and wait for no one. It was the day Francis went away that we had our first talk about Early Saxifrage. Tommy had picked a small piece of it to put in a bouquet for Francis with Hepaticas, Dutchman’s Breeches, Anemones, and Dog’s-tooth Violet. But Francis, who was pleased with the other flowers, asked him to take the Saxifrage out because he said it wasn’t pretty. Now both Tommy and I think it a dear, fleecy little flower, only as Francis was going home, Tommy did as he asked without a word. It was not until after we had seen him off at the sta- tion that Tommy told me he was sure Francis would be an artist when he grew up, as he mostly cared for things that pleased his eyes; and that although he didn’t. like the Saxifrage, he could 17 18 LITTLE TRUDY see beauty in many things that other people thought ugly. I know besides that Grandmother thinks Tommy will be a naturalist. ‘“The reason I care so much for Early Saxi- frage,” Tommy said, “‘ isn’t for its looks, but be- cause it’s such a useful little plant, and about as brave as Hepatica. It only asks for the least little bit of soil to grow in, and often none at all, as it comes up in rock crevices. There it pushes its tiny roots around until it causes strong rocks to crumble. As they fall away they make more soil. I’ve heard, too, that all the relatives of the Early Saxifrage make themselves useful to the earth in this same way.” I thought it very fine indeed of the Saxifrage to work so hard because, like Francis, I believed flowers were only meant to be pretty, and grew for us to pick. I never had heard before of their help- ing to make soil. But I’m sure Tommy is right, and that this is perhaps one of Mother Nature’s secrets which he has found out. Another of these secrets I found out myself, and I think it disappointed me a little. It was that Dog’s-tooth Violet isn’t a Violet at all, but a small yellow bell, something like a baby lily. Tommy had been telling me to watch for it down by the stream, and had showed me its soft, green leaves covered with purple spots as they stood up straight about some old trees. It is there that the greatest number of them are found blooming, and AOVAAINGS ATUVI—AI ALWI1d LUTLE ‘TRUDY 19 I shouldn’t at all wonder if that was the very place where Tommy learned to say spring flowers were like fairies. When many of the little bells are open, the patch seems more like a playground for elves than for the feet of real people; and when I am with them there I can quite forgive them for being Lilies instead of Violets. Even Grandmother could not tell me why the plant is named Violet, although she thought it Was on account of its root being pointed and sharp that it was called Dog’s-tooth Violet. The few blossoms that I carried home closed up tightly on the way, and although we tried to coax them open by putting their stems in hot water, it was of no use. I felt sorry that I did not leave them out under the great tree. I have not told you yet that Tommy has a sister. She is only four years old, and her hair is straight and black. She looks like no other lit- tle girl I have ever seen, and not a bit like Tommy, whose hair is red. She wants to do just what Tommy does, although he is a boy, and so much older. Some days she will sing for us, and be very good; but at other times she stamps her little foot, and shakes her black hair, and runs and hides just when we want her most. Every one calls her Little Trudy. Tommy is very proud of Little Trudy, and last Saturday he was going to take her to a boys’ party in the village, only when it was time for her to 20 LITTLE TRUDY be dressed, she couldn’t be found. Tommy ran over to our house to see if she were there, and then he called, ‘‘ Little Trudy, Little Trudy,” so loud that many small birds on the lawn flew up in the air. Grandmother and I started out with him to help find her. Even Peter knew something was wrong and ran ahead barking. Tommy said she couldn’t walk as far as the woods, and she didn’t like the stream because it made her feet wet. It might be that she had gone down in the meadow. We turned that way and walked quickly, shout- ing, “Little Trudy.” When we came to the barbed-wire fence Grandmother turned back, say- ing she would wait for us at Tommy’s house. He and I slipped under the fence though, and came into the meadow next the woods. Here, we had not gone very far, when we both saw something white that looked like Little Trudy’s dress. ‘Tommy called again and we ran on. When we came closer we knew we had found her. She was half sitting down on the ground, picking Bluets. “ Little Trudy get bunch of pretty flowers to take to party,” she said to Tommy. “ Little Trudy pick very fast.” All over the meadow where she was sitting the ground was blue with tiny flowers. Tommy calls them Quaker Ladies, as well as Bluets; but Little Trudy, who doesn’t yet know the names of flowers, LITTLE. TRUDY 21 says they are “ get-me-nots.”” And I, who had never seen them before, thought also that they were Forget-me-nots. I see now they are not quite so deep a blue, and that their flowers have but four lit- tle leaves, while Forget-me-nots have five. Then the green leaves of Bluets are tiny and rounded, and snuggle so close to the ground that they look like one great bed of soft moss. The little plants are all sprightly and sweet, and perhaps for this reason they have been called Quaker Ladies. I think also it may be because quantities of them grow about Philadelphia, the Quaker City. They must like the moist soil of the meadow, for so many hundreds and thousands of them grew together there that we could not always help stepping on them. Little Trudy had already picked her two hands full. She just took them up in clumps, root and all. This displeased Tommy, but he lifted her up on his back and carried her most of the way home. She can’t walk as fast as he and I, and Tommy didn’t want to be late getting to the party. CHAPTER IV. VIOLET MYSTERIES THE way I first knew that Violets had come was by finding two little dead ones lying in the middle of a dusty road. I thought that some child had found them close by, and dropped them there. I climbed over the fence that separates the road from a large field, where usually the men plant corn. There I hunted for a long time, hop- ing every minute to see a Violet. But when the bell rang for me to go in to luncheon, my hands were still empty. Grandmother asked me what J had been doing so long in the corn-field, and why I looked so dis- appointed. I told her all about my search, and showed her the two dead Violets I had found in the road. “It may be,” she said, “ you have not looked in the right places for Violets. Later we will go out together, although not in the corn-field.” Grandmother loves wild Violets quite as much asI do. She says they make her think of her own childhood, and the joy she had when they returned each spring, and the turf grew soft and green. ‘Tommy didn’t go with us that day. Grand- mother knows even better than he where Violets 22 VIOLET MYSTERIES 23 are to be found here, for they still grow in the very same places they did when she was a young girl. After we had started Grandmother said: ‘‘ It’s likely we shall find several kinds of Violets to- day. They are not all purple with round, heart- shaped leaves, as my little city girl supposes. There are besides White Violets, Yellow Violets, and purple ones with leaves queerly cut all about their edges. They all begin to open when Wind- flowers and Dog’s-tooth Violets unfold, and as you have already found these, we cannot be too early to catch the Violets.” I said I should be happy if I could only find a purple one. White, or Yellow Violets were strange to me. First we walked along by the side of the stream where the grass grows tall. All the way I was looking for Violets. Suddenly I spied a little white one. It was almost under my foot. It was such a wee thing that I thought at first it could not be a Violet at all, yet its leaves were the same round, heart shape as those of the Purple Violet. Fine, brown lines ran through the blossom’s white leaves, and it had a sweet scent, almost as tiny as itself. “ T used to call it the little Sweet White Violet,” Grandmother said. ‘‘I think it has the sweetest scent of them all.” She started to walk on, but I stayed with the tiny Violets until I had to run to catch up with 24 VIOLET MYSTERIES her. Then she called to me, and asked: ‘‘ What color is the ground here, child?” I was so excited that I called out ‘ green,” although it really was purple with Violets. “Here are our city friends,” said Grand- mother, “long-stemmed Purple Violets, with rounded, heart-shaped leaves. They are the so- called Common Blue Violets, although you and I think they are purple.” Here, in the high grass, many of them grew very tall, for they had to lift their buds up high enough for the sunshine to kiss them open. We each picked a bunch of these Violets. It could do them no harm, Grandmother said, because, like Pansies in the garden, the more they were picked the better they would bloom. All through the grass we saw small, white flowers, with three, pretty, pointed leaflets which grew on slender stems. The blossoms, I noticed, had five petals, as I have learned to call flower leaves, and in shape they reminded me of a beau- tiful Wild Rose. Only they were not nearly so large. “Do not pick them,” Grandmother said. “They fade very quickly, while if left here each little blossom will turn into a wild strawberry.” “Then I can pick and eat them,” I cried. Before going on to the woods we went into the swampy field, and just after we left the wet place, where we can only keep our feet dry by stepping on big tufts of grass, Grandmother stooped down vc PLATE VI.—‘AFTER WE HAD STARTED” VIOLET MYSTERIES 25 and said: ‘‘ Here is our other White Violet; out bright and early.” Its blossoms were almost as large as those of the Purple or Common Blue Violet, and its leaves were rounded and heart-shaped. They grew from the sides of its stems. Any one would have known it was a Violet. I thought it a little strange see- ing it so white, although its upper petals were tinted a little with purple. It is called Canada Violet, and surely it is much larger than the first little white one we had found. Grandmother said that it grew taller than most wild Violets. In the woods we found two other kinds of Vio- lets. One was tall and its deep purple face was very much like the Purple or Common Blue Violet; only its leaves, instead of being rounded, were jagged all about the edges. They looked as though they had been cut with scissors. Grandmother thought it was properly called Early Blue Violet, and that I should find it most often in the woods. We did not see the Violet with leaves some- thing the shape of a bird’s foot, called Bird’s- foot Violet. It grows in more sandy places than our woods, and although I have searched again since then I have never found it yet, nor been quite sure I saw the little marks of bird’s feet the Violet was named after. Even when I do find the Bird’s- foot Violet Grandmother says I must not pick it, as it is the one of the family that is growing rarer every year. 26 VIOLET MYSTERIES _ After finding the Early Blue Violet, I held in my hand four different kinds of these flowers. Then Grandmother reminded me there was still the yellow one which should be in bloom. She found it first. The pale yellow blossom was small and looked, with its fine brown lines, some- thing like the Sweet White Violet. It had no fragrance. One thing about it that I could not help noticing was that its leaves grew out from the sides of the tall stem which held the flowers. They did not come up straight from the ground as did those of all the others we had found except the Canada Violet. These leaves, besides, were covered with a thick down, and I wondered if the plant was chilly and needed something to keep it warm, as the Hepaticas need their fuzz. Its name is Downy Yellow Violet. It seemed strange to me that all these Violets should look enough alike for any child to know they were Violets, and still be so different. Yet Grandmother says there are many more kinds of them, and that I must be sharp-eyed to learn the names of all those even that grow about our home. In the book that I am soon to have for pressing flowers, I shall put in one of each sort that I find. Perhaps I will do this on rainy days and holidays, when Tommy pastes stamps in his album. While Grandmother and I looked at the Downy Yellow Violet, I thought I should like to dig one up from the ground and plant it at home. So I LATOIA ANTH NOWWOO LHIOIA MOTIGA ANMOC ‘“LAHTIOIA ANITA ATAIVA—IIA ALV Id VIOLET MYSTERIES 27 found a sharp stone and dug down in a circle around its roots. I was careful not to hurt it, and when I lifted it Grandmother quickly wrapped its roots and earth in some dried leaves. It was easy then to carry it home, and we planted it in a little fig basket, the same one that we had used in March for making a bird’s nest basket, and put it on the window-seat, where it is shady, and it can have cool, fresh air like that in the wood. When Tommy came to see us again he was sur- prised to hear many of the things Grandmother had to tell us about Violets. He didn’t know for one thing that the purple ones were favorite flow- ers of Napoleon. Just why Grandmother thinks them so much more modest than other flowers, and why the poets have written about their being modest, neither Tommy nor I could understand. I said I loved the Violet best, but that I thought the white Hepatica had a more modest look than any Vio- let. Tommy thought the Yellow Violet looked downright pert. He asked Grandmother if Napo- leon were a modest man, and if he loved modest people. When she answered, “‘ No, oh dear, no,” it only made things more confusing. But she said that we should love flowers for their own sake, and have our own impressions about them, no matter what other people thought or wrote about them. When I went to bed that night, I felt that I 28 VIOLET MYSTERIES had learned a great deal about Violets. It all seemed very mysterious to me then, and with the white and yellow ones I still felt strange. In the morning, I thought, I will run out and pay them another visit. CHAPTER V THE SPIRIT OF SECRET VALLEY ALTHOUGH Tommy calls the places where he knows certain wild flowers grow “ bunks,” he talks sometimes about Secret Valley. It is far away from any house and dark enough to scare most girls, even when the sun shines, and so full of water that no one could go there and come out again without getting pretty wet. One day he said: “The trouble with Secret Valley is that you never know just where your foot is going when you put it down. You think to set it on a little hill of grass, but it often slips off, and you go knee-deep in the water. Peter would rather do anything than go to Secret Valley. The water there is not the kind he likes for a good swim. It is covered with pale green stuff, like seaweed, and never looks bright and shiny.” It is in the spring that Tommy goes to Secret Valley. Then he can see better where he is step- ping than when tall weeds cover up the slippery places. The valley always looks cheerful in the spring because then the Spice Bush is blooming, and thousands of its tiny, yellow flowers give the place a real sunshiny look. Like the Red Maple it blooms in early April, 29 30 THE SPIRIT OF SECRET VALLEY and because it is a bush instead of a tall tree, it is easy to get up close to it and look at its pretty, fluffy flowers. They are quite a pale yellow, and grow together in little bunches all along the sides of the bare twigs. As yet there is not a single leaf on the bushes. They burst out later. Grandmother thinks that when the Red Maple and Spice Bush are blooming the woods are more beautiful than at any other time. She told me also that when we had our great War of the Revolution, many housewives used the dried leaves and berries of Spice Bushes in their cakes, instead of spices. It was not easy then for peo- ple to buy everything they wanted. But because the Spice Bush grows in our woods and all along a little path on the way to the vil- lage, I know it is not especially to see it that Tommy goes to Secret Valley. The last time he came back from there he had a very queer look, and I felt sure that something had happened to him. He said he had gone to the valley for a flower called Marsh Marigold; but he came home without the least little sprig of ‘it, and this seemed strange as he wanted to show ‘it to me. I asked him what Marsh Marigold looked like, and he said: ‘‘ A big Buttercup, only it is wide awake while the Buttercup is still asleep.” Its leaves are very large and shiny, and it grows in swampy places, where it is hard to reach. Often Tommy finds it near Skunk Cabbage. PLATE VIII.—SECRET VALLEY THE SPIRIT OF SECRET VALLEY 31 Country people scrape its young shoots and boil them to eat, as the cook does asparagus. They also call it Cowslip, which is not the right name for it, because that belongs to a flower which grows in England. Shakespeare’s name for it was Mary-bud, the prettiest one of all. I feel sorry not to have seen Marsh Marigold, although I think I shall know it when I do, from what Tommy has said. The curious way he has acted since coming back from Secret Valley is still puzzling. He surely saw something there besides the Spice Bush and Marsh Marigold. He has been very solemn and whenever he speaks it is to say that girls are “* great muffs.” Once he said they were very bold. I think on Sunday, when there isn’t much to do, that he may tell us what has changed him so much. I know already that Philip Todd told him there was a nest of white crows in Secret Valley. Philip sits in the next pew to Grandmother and me at church, and he is in Tommy’s class at school. They are great friends. But Philip does not care much about wild flowers. He likes ani- mals better, and has a great many pigeons and pets. All his books are about animals. Sometimes he and Tommy have long arguments together. Now Tommy never tells anything about wild flowers that is not really true. He never makes them out one bit more wonderful than they are—he doesn’t have to. But Philip tells some stories about ani-. 32 THE SPIRIT OF SECRET VALLEY mals that seem very hard to believe. I think what he said about white crows has had some- thing to do with Tommy’s strange look since he came back from the valley. On Sunday, after church, I asked him if that was not so, and then it all came out. He told Grandmother and me the whole story as we were walking home through the garden. He did go up to Secret Valley to find out if Philip’s story was true, and looked into every bird’s nest he saw that was built high enough for a crow’s. But they were all as black as ink. Then he sat for a long time watching to see if any white crows were flying about, and again every one he saw was black. It was beginning to grow cool, and the sun had almost given up peering like tiny gold spots through the trees when Tommy looked up and saw, just in the middle of the wet ground, and standing on the trunk of a dead tree, not a white crow, but a girl. She held her head up high, and reminded Tommy of the girls he had read about. Her hair was straight, and her hands hung down by her sides. She didn’t appear ,to notice that a plant called Baneberry stood up beside her. Tommy thought this very queer, for the plant had bloomed earlier than those in our woods. Perhaps it was better suited with the rich soil of Secret Valley. Its bunch of soft white flowers, which appear to be all fluff, for their little petals PLATE I1X.—THE SPICE BUSH THE SPIRIT OF SECRET VALLEY 33 are small and short, had already fallen, and in their places were left only little stems where round berries were forming. But neither they nor the Baneberries’ beautiful pointed leaflets made this strange girl look at them, and she didn’t mind a bit that a darning needle was close by her hand. She never spoke to Tommy, although she must have seen him sitting there watching for white crows; and she looked so much like a statue on the tree’s stump that he didn’t speak to her. After awhile he crept away very softly, and forgot all about bringing home a bit of Marsh Marigold. Since then he has been wondering who this girl could be. He had never seen her before, although he knows every one who lives near here and in the village. He says she looked as though she never intended to leave that stump, or Secret Valley. He has told Philip Todd nothing about all this because he doesn’t want him to know he ever be- lieved there were white crows in the valley. Be- sides, he says he will go again in a few days to see if the girl is still standing on the old tree’s stump. Grandmother called out to him: “Keep well awake, Tommy, if you do; for surely you were half asleep and dreamed that you saw the girl spirit of Secret Valley.” Then Tommy declared that he was wide awake every minute, and that he had seen a real girl with straight hair. CHAPTER VI WHAT SALLIE FOUND OUT ABOUT BLOODROOTS THE bullfrog is not croaking so much now as when we first came to live in the country, but his appetite for crickets is as keen as ever. His life is quite apart from that of the little woodland flowers, and lately I have not seen so much of him. Another reason for this is because it has rained for two whole days. There has been no sun- shine nor bright blue sky; even the soft, white clouds have been away. Things have just looked dull and gray all over. While it has been raining so hard, I have thought of the flowers in the woods—the Violets, the Wind-flowers, Rue-anemones, and Dog’s-tooth Violets—and wondered if they were drowning. Hepaticas and Early Saxifrage and Dutchman’s Breeches were already gone before the rain came. Even now that the blue has come back to the sky, and the sun is peeping out a little, I cannot run out to see if the flowers are still there. The ground is very wet, and besides we are expecting Sallie. Sallie’s full name is Sarah Hubbard. Grand- mother chose this time for her to visit us because she wanted her to see the country looking so beauti- ful. She lives in the city most of the year, and I 34 ABOUT BLOODROOTS 35 think she knows very little about the country. She is only a year older than I, but much taller. She loves dogs, and even cats, and she has been across the ocean six times. When she comes to-day it will be too late to go out in the woods and much too wet; but in the morning I shall show her some of Tommy’s bunks. I feel sure she doesn’t know that wild flowers come up every year in the same places, and that people who live in the country learn to know just where to find them. Then there is Tommy’s dried collection of plants for her to see, and Philip Todd’s pets and ever so many other things. Sallie has come. She has grown taller since I saw her last, and her hair is braided instead of hanging down her back. She says that she loves wild flowers, though she seldom sees them, be- cause almost every summer she goes to Europe, and to places where there are cathedrals and pic- ture galleries, but no flowers. For a minute I felt as if I wanted to go and see such places too; but when I remembered all the little flowers that were coming out, I thought it would be hard to leave them. Tommy came to-day while Grandmother was having tea in the library, and the first words he said were: ‘‘ There’s another flower out for you to show Sallie.” Grandmother asked him to tell us all about it. 36 ABOUT BLOODROOTS “Its name is Bloodroot,” he said, ‘‘ and it is very white, as white as snow. It opens in the shape of a cup, just fit for butterflies to sip from, and its center of little fluffy things is the color of gold. The most wonderful thing about Bloodroot is the good care its leaves take of the young flowers. ‘They stand up straight from the ground and stay wrapped around the buds to keep them warm until they can open without getting frost-nipped. Then another curious thing about Bloodroot is that right under the flowers there are two tiny leaves—botanists call them floral leaves —which look brown and crisp like tissue paper. Very few grown-up people have ever seen them,” he went on to say, “‘ because they fall off before the flowers are fully open.” Tommy spoke very wisely, yet Sallie said: “Tissue-paper leaves must look queer; have you seen them, Tommy?” Tommy answered: ‘No, I have only read about them.” After we had had luncheon the next day, and the wind had blown things dry again, we all went out to see Bloodroot on the high ridge in the woods. It looked to me even more beautiful than Tommy had said, and both Sallie and I could see quite plainly how some of the large leaves were still taking care of the young flowers. But under the flowers we found no leaves that looked like tissue paper. All the stems we saw were bare PLATE X.—BLOODROCT ABOUT BLOODROOTS 37 and smooth, and at their tops sat the pure white flowers. ‘“ Perhaps we are not out early enough for the little brown leaves,” Tommy said. ‘“ Daybreak might be the time to catch them.” Sallie was the most disappointed of us all at not finding them, and went on looking under each flower long after Tommy and I had given them up. I thought perhaps they might be just as hard to find as Philip’s nest of white crows. Afterward, when we were gathering Violets to take home to Grandmother we forgot about Bloodroot and the tissue-paper leaves. In the morning, as soon as I was dressed, I ran downstairs to find Sallie, for she was not in her room; neither was she in the dining-room nor on the veranda. Grandmother was beginning to wonder where she could possibly be when she came in. She had her hat on and in her hand were some Bloodroots. ‘*So you have been to the woods already?” Grandmother said. ‘‘ My little girl here is never out so early.” Sallie was so delighted about something that she danced all around the table. Then when Grandmother said it was the country air that made her so lively, she put down the Bloodroots, and under one of them there were two little leaves look- ing just like tissue paper. ‘*‘ Even at daybreak,” Sallie said, “‘ they are not 38 ABOUT BLOODROOTS easy to find. The birds awaked me chirping, and after that I could not help thinking how fine it would be to go out and search for those little leaves.” I knew that Sallie must have been up very, very early, as the birds are about as soon as dawn breaks, taking breakfast and singing in between times. “When I was really up,” Sallie said, ‘‘ I made great haste to get out of the house. Everything here was so still. But it was cool out-of-doors, and once I had a mind to run back and cuddle again into my soft, warm bed. Then the sun peeped out to cheer me and I ran on. The dew was hanging on the grasses like tiny soap-bubbles. I was not afraid being out so early; but once I had a little scare. “Tt was as I turned from the open field to go toward the Bloodroot ridge. I heard such a funny, bounding noise, and just as I was thinking which way to run, a rabbit gave a leap behind me and sat quite still. His ears were lifted straight up, and he looked surprised to see me out so early. My heart beat very fast. Indeed I was about to ask him if he wasn’t also frightened when he bounded away. It seemed silly to be so fright- ened at just meeting a rabbit, and afterward I laughed at his funny look. ‘Then, in a few min- utes, I was with the Bloodroots. “They were all asleep. Even those which we PLATE XI.—‘‘HIS EARS WERE LIFTED UP AND HE LOOKED SURPRISED TO SEE ME’” ABOUT BLOODROOTS 39 saw yesterday wide open were tightly closed, like buds. I had no idea when they might awake, so I began passing from one to another, looking un- der the closed heads to see if there were anything like two thin, brown leaves. After a while I won- dered if Tommy had not made a mistake. “It was lonely in the wood with only the Blood- roots about me, and they fast asleep. Soon it seemed to me as if they were awakening. ‘The sunshine had begun to slant in upon them. In- deed they were opening. One was wide awake. A green leaf that I watched appeared still a little uncertain about opening very far to let the bud come out, so I slipped my finger down through its top, and helped it along a little. The bud on the straight stalk inside was snug and warm. And something else I saw: the two mysterious little leaves. They clasped the white bud like a brown paper wrapping. Tommy was quite right. I broke off the stalks close to the ground, and here they are, just as I found them, the green leaf wrapped around the bud, with its thin, brown leaves underneath. My hands, after picking them, were covered with a red and yellow stain.” I took the Bloodroots from Sallie and put them in a cool spot on the window sill. “Tt seems as if I had been gone a long time from the house,”’ she said, ‘‘ I am so hungry.” “You will both be botanists when you grow up,” Grandmother said, as she laughed. “ It will 40 ABOUT BLOODROOTS be a good beginning to know about those little floral leaves. When I was a child I learned that Bloodroot had been a very good friend to the In- dians. It was with its sap that they painted their faces and dyed their feathers and straws for their baskets. Sometimes it is called Indian Paint, or Red Puccoon.” I was just a little sorry not to have heard this story before Francis went home. CHAPTER VII ANSWERS TO FRANCIS’S LETTER THE first letter that Grandmother received from Francis was nearly all about flowers, and he asked so many questions that she thought she could not answer them all at one writing. Tommy and I decided to help her a little. Francis had spent almost every minute since his return to New England in the woods. He had found Butterflies’ Banners, as he still called Dutchman’s Breeches, and was sorry that the time had come for them to fade. He wrote: “I won- der if you all love Spring Beauty. It fairly covers the ground here, and its delicate white blossom is very like the Wind-flower, only running through it are fine pink lines. Its leaves look very much like grass, that is, they would if they stood up straighter, and it is by them and the pink veins in the flower that any one can tell it from Wind-flower, or Rue-anemone. In our woods it spreads out like mats over the ground. But I have noticed that it is quite a fair-weather lover, for when it is cloudy, or rain is falling, the pretty blossoms close tightly. I think this is because too much wet is not good for its health. ‘“ Please write me,” he went on, “if it grows 41 42 ANSWERS TO FRANCIS’S LETTER in your woods about the stumps of old trees, and if you are not more fond of it than Butterflies’ Banners.” Tommy told Grandmother he thought a good answer to send Francis about Spring Beauty would be that thousands and thousands of them grew through our woods, and about old tree- stumps, and even out in sunny spots, and that it lasted some time after Wind-flowers had faded. Then he wanted Grandmother to say that he didn’t care for it nearly as much as for Butterflies’ Banners, and that he really loved it most on ac- count of its sleepiness. “‘ You might add,” he said to Grandmother, “‘ that the Spring Beauty is always sleepy unless the sun touches it and coaxes it to keep awake. I’ve read that it turns its blos- soms around to face the sun, only I don’t believe that is true.” I thought Tommy’s answer would do, because Spring Beauty had disappointed me by closing up its flowers when I had put a pretty little bouquet of them in a glass bowl. Francis told us in his letter about a plant called Large-flowered Wake-robin. ‘‘It is one of the Trilliums,” he wrote. Now this excited Tommy very much, for although he had read and knew about the same flower, he had never found it. “It was when I was looking for Jack-in-the- pulpit that I saw it,”” Francis wrote. ‘‘ Its leaves are something like Jack’s, only there is but one ALNVGE ONIYdS—UX ALV Id ANSWERS TO FRANCIS’S LETTER 48 stalk to bear them, while the Preacher has two. The Wake-robin has just three pointed, large leaves, and they grow around the top of the stalk, underneath the flower. This is white, with also three pointed leaves, or petals, and it looks some- thing like a fine lily that grows in mother’s con- servatory. There is only one place in our nearest woods where it grows, and there Spring Beauty is on one side of it, and a little distance the other way a stalk of Solomon’s Seal is in bud.” Francis didn’t understand why the plant was called Wake-robin, for he wrote he had never seen that bird in shooting distance of it. Grandmother said this was from a pretty legend telling that as the Trilliums, or Wake-robins, blossomed early in the spring, they were the flow- ers chosen to wake the robins. “ But they don’t open nearly as early as robins are awake,” Tommy argued. “ And if Trilliums live only in deep woods, I doubt that robins go near them at all. They like to hop around on lawns and build nests in orchards. They are almost as fond of the sun as Spring Beauty.” Tommy asked Grandmother to write that he should not give up trying to find Wake-robins somewhere near our home, and he wanted her also to tell Francis that two days ago he had seen three Scarlet Tanagers sitting on a fallen tree-trunk near the rock called Old Adam. He looked around by accident and there they were in a row, their wings 44 ANSWERS TO FRANCIS’S LETTER brighter than flames of fire. First one called out its note, and flew off, then another followed. No sky- rocket on Fourth of July, Tommy said, was ever so beautiful as these birds, darting through the tree-tops. For a long time the third one sat alone on the tree-trunk. Tommy stayed where he was and did not make a sound. Then a shower of dead leaves fell through the air and the bird was up and off in the same direction as the others. Grandmother wrote herself to Francis that she would offer a prize for the child finding the first Wake-robin. It was not to be picked. She must just be told where it grows, so that she might go and look at it. We all know now that Trilliums are rare flowers, and that we shall have to hunt hard to find them. Tommy thinks besides that they are most likely to grow farther away from our house than I can walk. ‘‘ The rare wild flowers,” his father told him, ‘‘ don’t like man, and as he draws nearer they move farther away, and hide in dense woods. Tommy said: “ It must be a terrible thing for a delicate flower to have a man, or even a boy come near it. Ten to one he means mischief. If he sees it and it’s pretty, he’s very apt to pick it, because he thinks that’s what it’s for; but if his head is filled with shooting birds, or something else he’s likely to stamp it to death without seeing it at all. If flowers could talk they surely would have something to say about how they trembled PLATE XIII.—THE LARGE-FLOWERED WAKE-ROBIN ANSWERS TO FRANCIS’S LETTER 45 and turned pale, and how their hearts beat when- ever they felt the earth about them stirred by foot- Steps. “Even when they are picked they are carried off to see a world they know nothing about, and then are thrown away because they fade. It’s very odd,” Tommy went on, for he was in one of his talking moods, “ that grown people sometimes say flowers have no feelings. Many flowers go to sleep, like the Spring Beauty, and awake just as regularly as I do. Others are so sensitive that they close their leaves at the slightest touch of my hand. It is a pity that they can never speak out boldly and let people know how much they feel. They can’t even cry like babies, until they get just what they want.” ‘“Am I to put all that in Francis’s letter?” Grandmother asked. ‘“‘ It seems that a boy with so much feeling for flowers has small mercy for our postman’s shoulders.”’ Tommy laughed and said perhaps he had bet- ter write a letter to Francis himself; but that he should not do it until after he had had a good tramp hunting for Wake-robins. Philip Todd is quite sure he is going to get Grandmother’s prize, and says any flower is easy enough to find; but I think it will either be Sallie or Tommy who first tells her where the Wake- robin grows. Tommy himself seems to think that Sallie will win the prize. I have noticed that 46 ANSWERS TO FRANCIS’S LETTER since she went out at daybreak and found the Bloodroot’s queer little leaves, he has quite ceased to think of her as a city girl who knows nothing about wild flowers. CHAPTER VIII JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT AND HIS FRIENDS EVER since Violets have bloomed, Jack-in-the- pulpit has been in the woods. I have not men- tioned this before because there were so many other things to say; and also because most boys and girls already know Jack quite well. It would be a hard matter, I think, for any one to miss seeing the Preacher, as Jack-in-the-pulpit is also called. First of all two tall, large leaves come up from the ground and they are both di- vided into three pointed leaflets. They stand up straight above the flower’s head, quite as though it were their intention to make sure it should have enough shade. For even in the thick woods where the Preacher loves to grow there slips in some- times warm, bright sunlight, which doesn’t suit Jack. But with the two leaves flaring overhead, the flower is just as well shaded as though it had a parasol. The flower part, that every one calls the pulpit, grows on a little stalk of its own which is tucked in between the leaves. It looks like a funny leaf, closed together at the bottom, and ending in a long point which hangs down. Grandmother says it is something like the hood over an old-fashioned 47 48 JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT pulpit; a kind that I have never seen. This pulpit is green or else green streaked with purple. Just inside it there is a little straight piece, and this is. Jack, or the Preacher that stands always in his pulpit. Now what is very curious is that neither the pulpit nor the Preacher are true flowers, although each Jack-in-the-pulpit bears very many. These are tiny little things, growing around the bottom of the stick that every one calls the Preacher. Indeed these florets grow in the same way, and are just as little seen as those of Skunk Cabbage. Grandmother says they both belong to the same . family. They are first cousins, at least, and in many things their ways are alike. I believe they are even more alike than Francis and I; although Skunk Cabbage is coarse and has a bad odor, while Jack-in-the-pulpit is very refined and has no odor at all, except one that is like the green woods. I think that Jack-in-the-pulpit has more friends than any other plant. Tommy speaks of it as though it were a real friend. He says, ‘‘ There’s a fine fellow,” when he sees one that is taller than others; and he calls this plant ‘“‘ he,” instead of it. ‘This must be on ac- count of its name, for I never heard him speak of Skunk Cabbage as “he,” nor of a Violet, nor any other flower. ‘‘ Jack-in-the-pulpit is very much like us,” I PLATE XIV.—JACKS IN THE SPRING WeCODS JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT 49 heard him telling Philip Todd. Philip said, with one of his queer laughs, ‘‘ He hasn’t much Chris- tian charity.” After this they talked a long time about the Preacher, and I learned that they both think it punishes little insects that crawl into the pulpit for the sake of sipping the tiny florets’ nectar. It is easy enough for them to get down into the pulpit, but when they want to come out they find that its inner sides are too slippery for them to walk over. Then above where the florets cluster around the little piece called Jack, it grows larger, form- ing a ledge, which makes it quite impossible for small insects to get out by using their wings. Just why the Preacher wishes to keep them down in the pulpit until they die neither Tommy nor Philip knew. But an old gentleman who comes to see Grand- mother sometimes, and who is a botanist, has told us since then that it is because the plant really wants them for nourishment. It uses them after they are quite dead, as we do food. At the Botanical Garden at Bronx Park, I saw a plant which did this very same thing, only in a different way. It was called Venus’s Fly-trap, and its leaves were exactly like little traps with hinges in the middle. All around their edges were sharp bristles. I saw these leaves catching the flies that visitors to the garden fed them; and the people said the plant was known 50 JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT the world over because it had such a wonderful appetite for flies. Sallie has seen Venus’s Fly-trap at Kew Gar- dens, near London. She was there last year in ‘April, so she saw also its white blossoms. These grow on stems much higher than the leaves and have just five white petals. At Kew the plants were shown as very great curiosities, and so many peo- ple went to see them that a guard stood close by, asking every one not to give them anything to eat. “They have been overfed to-day,” he said, “and their traps are not working.” In America, Venus’s Fly-trap grows in very few places. One of these is near Wilmington, in ‘North Carolina. But Tommy says it has a rela- tive that grows in bogs near here, called Sundew. ‘Another thing that Sallie learned in England is that there Jacks-in-the-pulpit are called Lords and Ladies. The ones most green are the Ladies, and the ones with purple stripes are Lords. Tommy said to Grandmother: ‘ No matter where you are in the woods the Preacher never lets you forget him. I’m just as fond of him when his pulpit has fallen to pieces and he has turned into a beautiful cluster of red berries, as I am when he first comes, and has about him Wind- flowers and Rue-anemones, Bloodroots, Dog’s- tooth Violets and a whole gay company.” All through our woods I have noticed other JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT 51 leaves than Jack’s that grow tall, and are rounded, and have a soft feeling like velvet. But I cannot find their flowers. I have turned them over and over, and peeped under them, and still there is not a bud in sight. It isn’t as though I had only seen one or two of these leaves. I might have forgotten them then. But I meet them very often, and quite a number of them grow together. There are places in the woods where they snuggle by each other very closely. I thought it was not yet time for them to bloom, so when Philip Todd told me they already had their flowers, I kept very still, thinking he was playing some joke. ‘“‘T’ll show you those flowers,” he said, ‘‘ and when I do, you’ll say, no wonder you didn’t find them yourself.” We went to a patch of leaves, and Philip got down on his knees and began poking in the soil with his finger. I thought every minute he would let his joke out, and so I was surprised when he did lift up from the earth a real flower. It was a curious little brown thing, shaped some- thing like a bell, and covered with earth. It seemed to want to cuddle down, and fairly get inside the earth. I said: “So you are a little flower that doesn’t want to lift up your pretty head.” Philip said: “It wants to burrow into the earth like a woodchuck. Its name is Wild Gin- ger, and the reason it is called that is because 52 JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT the root has a taste like ginger. ‘There’s a lot of it about here, and every year it plans for more to come. That little hiding flower forms a capsule filled with many round seeds. Then when it bursts, it does so very quickly and the seeds fly out in all directions. You see, it doesn’t run the risk of being picked that other flowers do by standing up and letting every one see that they are pretty.” Philip had talked so much about Wild Ginger that he said he felt hungry. We went back to the house, and it was just the time that Grand- mother was taking her afternoon tea. The cook brought her in some cake besides and we had jam on our bread-and-butter. CHAPTER IX, WHEN DOGWOOD BLOOMS WHEN May came there were still many flowers in the woods that had begun to bloom in April; and many others were unfolding that were stran- gers to me, and whose names I did not know. The little early spring blossoms that I had seen and cared for like Hepaticas, Wind-flowers, Dutch- man’s Breeches, Saxifrage and Dog’s-tooth Violet were all gone, although Violets stayed, and so many Spring Beauties were awake in the woods that often I nearly stepped on them. Tommy knew that Wake-robins still bloomed; but no girl or boy had yet won Grandmother’s prize by find- ing one. The woods in May quite lost their bare look; most of the dried leaves had blown away, and tall weeds and grasses sprung up everywhere. I thought it more difficult to find wild flowers than when the ground was bare. But there is one flower now in the woods which every one must see. It is Dogwood, a large white blossom that comes on shrubs or small trees. Now that it is in bloom the woods look gayer than if they were going to a party. These blossoms can be seen from a long way off, and no one could help thinking that they made the country beauti- ful, even if he didn’t love flowers. IT used to think that Dogwood blossoms had four 53 54 WHEN DOGWOOD BLOOMS beautiful white leaves, each with a little pink notch in the middle of its edge. This I know now to be a mistake, and that the leaves which nearly all children think are white flowers are just envelopes keeping the true Dogwood flowers from suffer- ing any harm, just as a real envelope keeps a let- ter tidy. These true flowers are tiny, little, green things, and we see them all packed together in the center of the beautiful white leaves. It isn’t likely that many would know about them, and cer- tainly no one would call them beautiful, if the white envelopes didn’t wave so gayly, calling to hundreds of people to look their way. Insects see them as well as people, and when they fly up to make them a visit, they soon get to know the little green flowers which otherwise they might never see. It seems very strange to me that flowers could never live happily and bloom if they were not vis- ited by insects. They are their messenger boys, and carry the golden dust which helps them to form seeds. ‘They take it from one flower to an- other, and if it touches just the right spot, seeds soon begin to form and to grow. Sometimes the insects don’t even know they are carrying the golden dust. It is light, like powder, and clings to their legs and wings. At the next flower’s house they visit, they perhaps spill a little of it, and this, of course, is just what the flowers want. So, it is really to catch the insects’ eyes that WHEN DOGWOOD BLOOMS 55 Mother Nature has given the plain little Dog- wood blossoms the beautiful white floral envelopes. All this I found out from Grandmother’s gar- dener, Herr Wilhelm Fritz. The rest of his name is too long and hard for me to write. He was talking about Dogwood the day the men were planting corn in the field. “Ven it plooms,” he said, ‘‘ der time has come ter drop in der corn kernels. Der tree is pretty veather vise.” Since then I have heard Tommy talk about Dogwood. He thinks people, and especially girls, look so long and so much at the white floral en- velope that they never notice all the other things that are beautiful about the tree. “ There are its twigs,”’ he said; ‘“‘ almost before the winter is past they show glimmers of bright colors; and when the ground is bare again and Jack Frost is here, its red berries have a look as gay as holly.” Sallie is enchanted with Dogwood. She loves to get close up to the trees, and when the boughs hang low enough, she takes them in her arms, and looks and looks at the flowers. I can tell by her face that she is thinking very hard about some- thing. Sallie writes wonderful compositions at school, so perhaps she will write one about Dog- wood, telling how it looks when it is just budding; how gay it makes the woods in May, and then how bright its berries are in the autumn. 56 WHEN DOGWOOD BLOOMS Francis has already sent Grandmother a little sketch that he made of Dogwood. He also wrote a note to Tommy and said it was most “ paint- able.” In his letter he wrote besides that he had quite decided to be an artist. Philip Todd has grown to love Dogwood, just as much as he does his pets. He went out yester- day to hunt for wild flowers with Sallie and me. Tommy had gone away by himself some time be- fore we started. We passed ever so many people coming away from our woods, and every one of them had bunches of Dogwood in their arms. Grandmother is very much displeased with the peo- ple who break off large branches from the trees. She says they are thoughtless, and have no knowl- edge of the harm they are doing. Most of them also throw the branches away before they reach their homes, as the flowers fade quickly. Grand- mother thinks it will only be after they have truly learned to know flowers and to love them that they will stop being so cruel. Philip Todd doesn’t care sometimes how he treats flowers, and he carries such a large jack- knife in his pocket that there’s little he can’t get. But we have all noticed that he treats Dogwood with great respect. “It’s this way,” he said. ‘‘I once had enough of cutting Dogwood to last me my whole life. It was last summer when I had strayed into Uncle Hiram’s woods.” PLATE XV.—SALLIE AND DOGWOOD WHEN DOGWOOD BLOOMS 57 I began to listen very sharply, for he is the queer neighbor whom nobody likes, and yet every- body calls him Uncle Hiram. Philip went on: “TI climbed right up one of his Dogwood trees, took out my jack-knife, and had cut off three big branches when I heard a great, gruff voice calling out to me. I knew it must belong to Uncle Hiram. Before I could get down and run, he was under the tree, and held up in the air a monstrous shining saw. It was the big- gest saw in the whole world. “© Come down from there!’ Uncle Hiram called. ‘Come down and let me saw your arms off; it’s a good thing for such young chaps as you to know how it feels to be without a limb or two!’ “‘T wasn’t frightened, of course, only I thought it best to stay up in the very top of that tree. It was more than half a day before I came down, and when I did I had promised Uncle Hiram never to cut off a Dogwood limb again as long as I lived. Uncle Hiram knows I mean to keep my word, and he talks with me sometimes now. He says I’ll make a more useful man than if he had taken my arms off that day.” We were near Old Adam when Philip told us this story, and the sun was shining very brightly. The rock looked much whiter than on days when clouds hang over the sun. I was just telling Sallie that before she went home we were to have a picnic, and eat our luncheon on Old Adam, when 58 WHEN DOGWOOD BLOOMS I saw a girl lying down among the grass. A Dog- wood blossom was in her hair, and a great branch of Dogwood blossoms drooped down over Old Adam. I had never seen this girl before; but that very minute I felt sure she was the same one Tommy had seen in Secret Valley. Her hair hung straight by the sides of her face, and she never once moved, even when we ran up and jumped down on the other side of the rock. I asked Sallie and Philip if they had seen her there in the grass, and each said “no,” which I thought very queer. We went quickly to Tommy’s house, for I wanted to tell him about seeing the strange girl. He said he had caught no glimpse of her, although he’d been sitting on the top of Old Adam for a good part of the afternoon. We both wondered then if what Grandmother had said was true, and if she could be the spirit of the Dogwood, as well as of Secret Valley. Tommy surely had seen her and so had I, and each time she was quite still. “When I see her,” Philip Todd said, “ PII call out something to make her move.” “Only this afternoon I saw an elf in a Dog- wood nest,” Tommy told us, quite seriously; “a smiling little elf, and one that asked funny ques- tions whenever I went near.” But Tommy didn’t deceive us, for we all knew the elf he meant was Little Trudy. CHAPTER X MORE FLOWERS, AND WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED ONE of the strange things in the country is that sometimes when you are searching the hardest for a certain flower, you find another that you hadn’t ex- pected to see at all. Lately we have all been look- ing for Wake-robins, but each day passes without our finding them, and Grandmother is beginning to think they have vanished from this part of the country. This is, of course, because the people about here have already picked too many of them. To-day when Tommy came he again shook his head about Wake-robins; but he had some other little flowers to show us. They were quite as fresh as when he picked them, for he had brought them home in the tin box he sometimes wears strapped over his shoulder. ‘This box keeps the air away from flowers, and while in it they do not fade. The Star of Bethlehem which he took out first is indeed like a star. It is just the shape of one, and bright yellow. But its leaves are so like grass that it would be hard to tell them apart, if it were not that the flower holds up its head and blinks so gayly. Grandmother and Tommy didn’t quite agree about the name of this flower; for she says that 59 60 WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED when she was a girl the plant we call Spring Beauty was known as Star of Bethlehem. Then Tommy ran home to fetch his books about flowers, and we all saw that he was quite right. “Things are changed now,” Grandmother said, “but Tommy, I do think your flower much more like the bright Star of Bethlehem than the sleepy Spring Beauty could ever be.” “Many people call it just Yellow Star Grass,” Tommy answered, “ only I think the other name is prettier.” Another flower that Tommy had in his box he called Bellwort. It also was yellow, but very different looking from the Star of Bethlehem. The blossoms were so pale that I thought them the color of straw, and two of them hung down from the top of each stem like little bells. The leaves hugged very closely to the stalk, without having any stems of their own, and they were a soft green color. Underneath them we also noticed a pale bloom, something like that on purple grapes. I was just a little reminded of Dog’s-tooth Vio- let when I saw this flower, although they do not even belong to the same family. I think this was because the flowers were something like pale yellow bells that fairies might ring. Tommy had found it close to the Star of Beth- lehem. ‘There are many of them now in bloom, he says; but the one he brought home is to be pressed for his collection. WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED 61 This Bellwort has besides a near relative which he hopes to find in the woods. The way he will know it from the one he already has is because its leaves will clasp the stem even more closely— so closely that they will look as though they were pierced by the stem. The little bells then will hang out above these leaves, and as Tommy says they are fragrant, I think perhaps I shall care more for this relative called Perfoliate Bellwort than for the one which we have just seen. There was a reason, Tommy said, that he sel- dom went to the woods where he had found the Bellwort, although once his favorite bunks were there. He meant the woods the other side of Uncle Hiram’s, which belong to Miss Amelia, his mother’s friend. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to go, he said, but because he once did something there that made him ashamed. Grandmother asked him how that could be, and then he told us this story: “Before last year,” he began, “I had never seen a flower called Lousewort, or Wood Betony. I had read about it, and seen pictures of it, and I knew besides that it was a curious wild flower. But I had never found it, although I had hunted for it much more than I have this year for Wake- robins. “Tt’s a flower that can’t be mistaken. It’s just one of the few that has a look something like an animal. You may think it very strange, but each 62 WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED of these little flowers that grow in a bunch to- gether looks quite like the head of a walrus. It’s yellow, or purple, or sometimes flowers of both colors grow on the same plant. The reason it looks like a walrus is because the upper leaves of the flowers stand straight up, and turn over in front. Then two tiny bits hang down like the long white teeth of a walrus. The leaves are something like a coarse sort of fern. “Philip Todd told me one day that he had found it, and even showed me one of its pressed flowers, so that I might know he was playing no joke. Of course he kept its bunk a secret. The next morning I was up as early as I usually am on Fourth of July. It couldn’t have been later than five o’clock. ‘The birds were taking their breakfasts, and sipping at the spring in the meadow, and ever so many were singing in the bushes by the stream’s side. “J felt determined to find that flower, yet I hardly noticed where I was going. When I came to a turn, I didn’t stop to think, ‘ shall I go this way, or that way?’ I just somehow went. But when I did begin to think, I saw I was way down in Miss Amelia’s woods, and farther away from home than I'd ever been, at least before breakfast. ‘There was a fine old chestnut-tree in the woods, and J thought to lean up against it a few minutes to rest. Then just as I went toward it a little oven bird, or golden crowned thrush WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED 63 darted up and flew by me so swiftly I could hear her wings whizz. ““Tt’s strange,’ I thought, ‘that little bird isn’t out taking breakfast, or singing its morning carol.’ But I knew also that when a bird starts up just in front of your face, she has some good reason for staying just where she is until the last minute before she expects to be covered by a strange foot. ‘The lady has left her nest and eggs,’ I thought, and then I looked about to see where they were. “But now comes the strange part of the story. I saw two things at once: The Wood Betony and the nest of the golden thrush. In it there were five white eggs, speckled with brown. Perhaps it was the flower I saw first; but about that I’m not sure. Anyway the flower grew all around and above the nest, which was flat on the ground, and thatched over the top and almost hidden by some old leaves. You know the little oven birds build their nests so as to enter at the sides. ‘““I suppose I can never make any one under- stand how excited I was when I saw that flower. I forgot everything but that I had found it, and that it was there before my eyes. I forgot about treating flowers well, and that their lives are as dear to them as mine is to me. I forgot al- together about the little golden thrush. I just re- membered that I wanted that flower. I stooped down and tore it up from the ground, root, nest 64 WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED and all. They were so woven together that one could not come without the other. I held them both in my hands. Then I heard a sharp voice crying, ‘ Cheep, cheep, cheep.’ “TI looked up and there, on a bough, was the golden thrush. I felt her round eye looking me through and through, and all the time she cried, ‘ Cheep, cheep, cheep!’ Things then got worse, for her mate had flown on the bough beside her, and he also made a great noise. They hopped up and down the bough, always crying ‘ Cheep, cheep,’ and kept their round eyes on me till I felt more ashamed than I’d ever done in my life. ““T started to get away from that place quickly; but even after I’d turned my back on them I could feel they were still looking at me. “T knew I'd nearly broken the heart of that little bird, and perhaps I should have quite, if her mate had not come to her so quickly to help her cry ‘Cheep.’ I felt sad enough when I walked away, and until to-day I’ve never been in those woods since. “I had now and then taken one egg from a bird’s nest. The hen doesn’t mind that. She often lays another egg to take its place. But that day I tore up even the nest, just as though it were worth no more than a handful of dried leaves. That pair of little birds must have felt pretty badly when they saw me walking off with all they had in the whole world. For a long time PLATE XVI.—‘THEY WERE WOVEN TOGETHER’” WHY TOMMY FELT ASHAMED 65 I kept the nest and eggs in my room. ‘Then I traded them with Philip for a hornet’s nest. The Wood Betony -that I had stolen the nest to get, faded before I reached home.” “Even the sorrowful little birds must have for- given you by this time,” said Grandmother; “‘ you will not do it again.” CHAPTER XI COLUMBINE’S GLORY Every girl and boy, I think, has one flower which they care for more than any other. Francis loves the Arbutus best; my favorite is the same as Napoleon’s, the Common Blue Violet; and Sallie cares most for the Rose. Grandmother says that great men also have had favorite flowers; and that among all the plants Lord Tennyson chose the Ivy, and Solomon preferred Balsam. ‘The President of the United States wears a Carnation in his but- tonhole; and the Emperor of Germany has an Edelweiss. Nearly all nations have a flower for an emblem; and it does seem strange that America should have no especial one called her national flower. Per- haps this is because she is a free country, and there are so many flowers here people cannot agree to like one better than the others. America could not have the Thistle, for that is Scotland’s em- blem; nor the Shamrock which belongs to Ireland. The Lily represents France, and the Peony is the royal flower of China. A Chrysanthemum forms the imperial crest of Japan, and England’s flower is the Rose. 66 COLUMBINE’S GLORY 67 Now Tommy thinks that the Wild Columbine is the most beautiful flower in the whole of America, and that it would be much better for a national one than the Mayflower, which welcomed the Pilgrims, or the Goldenrod, which grows in every State in the Union. He says it is a flower that has true glory. It is red and yellow, and nods over from the end of a slender stem, something as if it were a bell. Then the flower’s leaves, or petals as I should say, are curiously folded together in the shape of horns of plenty, and the way their ends come together makes some people think of an eagle’s five talons. This means power. The flower’s full face is like a star with five rays, and when its center is seen in another position, it looks as if a ring of five turtle doves were there. These birds are emblems of peace, and Grandmother says this is why Columba, or Columbine, was chosen as a name for this plant, and that peace and power should be part of America. It is a little like hunting for animals, or faces, in puzzle pictures, to see all these signs, but it is on their account that Tommy thinks Columbine would make such a fine national flower. Its leaves, besides, are very, very pretty. They are fine and graceful, like ferns. Then what Tommy likes about Columbine is that it isso wild. It chooses to grow in the wild- est places, usually by rocks, and to reach it we have 68 COLUMBINE’S GLORY often to take a high climb. Sometimes we call it Rock Bells. Tommy’s father hopes it will never be chosen as a national flower, because he thinks that if all the people knew it as such, they would pick it until it would disappear in one season. Already it is a vanishing wild flower, like the Arbutus and Dutchman’s Breeches. It is vanishing because, although every year it should make and sow its own seed, often each flower in a little group of plants is picked and then no seeds are sown, and the next year there are fewer blossoms. The first day this spring that Tommy and his dog went to the well-known places where Colum- bine grows they found hardly any plants, and those they did find had a sickly, stunted look. This his father thinks is because they were too much picked last year. Next year perhaps they will not come up at all. Tommy had a hard tramp with Peter that day, in high, rocky places, and sometimes over trees that had been struck by lightning. In the night there had been a great storm, and the sun had not yet come out very brightly. That day also Tommy heard hundreds of noises; not the kind that people hear in the city, though, screeching, rumbling noises, but noises insects make shaking their wings, and tall plants flapping, and birds chirping. PLATE XVII.—WILD COLUMBINE COLUMBINE’S GLORY 69 Peter loves the woods best on such days and climbs to the highest places with his master. Sometimes they meet no one whom they know; but Tommy doesn’t mind that, for he talks as much to flowers and to birds as he does to people. When he came to see Grandmother in the afternoon he told us about this long walk he and Peter had had, and then said: “There’s a bunk of Columbine not too high nor too rough for you to reach; and it’s there, if anywhere, that you can see its full glory.” Grandmother said she should like to see it blooming at its best, and that there was no time like the present. So we started, Tommy being the guide. What we had not expected was that he would take us into our own woods, for they are flat, with only the Bloodroot Ridge and Old Adam for a rock. About there now there are but a few Col- umbines. We went on over the ridge, and soon Tommy bent down and crawled under some bushes. He held them up then for Grandmother .to pass through, and I slipped under next. Before this Tommy had shown me these bushes. They were Maple-leaved Arrow-woods, and higher than Grandmother’s head. Besides, they were in bloom. Very many of their tiny white flowers grew together in flat bunches, and the leaves had al- most exactly the same look as those of a young 70 COLUMBINE’S GLORY Maple-tree. They are beautiful wild shrubs, and are called Arrow-woods because their twigs are so straight, being without a bend, or curve. The Indians used them to make their arrows. I had always thought that these Arrow-woods grew solidly in a clump together; but after we had slipped through, I saw they made only part of a circle and inside—well, it was just Columbine’s glory. The Arrow-wood bushes had hidden these Columbines so completely that perhaps for a long time not a single one of their flowers had been picked. Every year they had grown thicker to- gether. Grandmother noticed at once that the blossoms here were almost twice as large as those near the top of Old Adam. “This is enchanting,” she said. ‘‘ Tommy, you are right: Columbine’s glory is here in this hidden place.” We all stood quite still, not venturing to move lest we should tread on the flowers. Then came a ruby-throated humming-bird, darting in and out among them, and looking as though he would whisper a word or two to each. Tommy said: “He steals their sweetness. He sips the nectar that is in the flowers. See, he can poise himself on his wings and sip and sip; but that old bumble-bee must alight on the flowers. before trying to taste their sweets. His weight bears them down, and even then he cannot reach COLUMBINE’S GLORY 71 the nectar like ruby-throat with his long-pointed bill. It seems as though this humming-bird should be Columbine’s mate, although nearby, perhaps, he has one of his own and fledglings. The butterflies amid Columbine’s glory could not keep still a minute, and when the wind came through the Arrow-woods, the whole company nodded and swayed their flowers and rocked to and fro together. After awhile they were still again, with only the ruby-throated humming-bird, the but- terfly and the heavy bee visiting them in turn. “We are invaders,’ Grandmother said. “Tm the only boy that knows this bunk,” Tommy replied, “ and I’ve known it now for two years. It’s hidden by the bluff on one side and the Arrow-woods on the other. There’s just, I think, a dozen boys who’d give their best jack- knives to know this place.” Grandmother asked him how he had found it, and then he told us. “‘ It was when Peter was a puppy. He was just beginning to learn things, and had a way of poking into places of his own accord. One day he slipped right under the Arrow-woods where we came through. I thought he’d be out again soon; but even when I gave him a call, he stayed under. Then I parted the bushes to see where he could be, and he was just looking at Col- umbine’s glory as hard as possible. In the autumn then father came up here and set in some other Arrow-woods, which now make the screen so thick. 72 COLUMBINE’S GLORY He says if the flower should vanish there will still be this secret place to show its full beauty.” “Even Philip Todd doesn’t know I have this bunk,” Tommy added. “I don’t tell it because if these flowers were picked by all the people that pass through the woods, they’d soon have the same look of old soldiers without arms and legs, that those have about Old Adam. Nearly every one loves to pick flowers; but when some people see a Columbine it seems as though they must take the whole clump and carry the earth away as well. “Father met a school-teacher in these woods one day. She had come out from the city, because she heard this was a good place for finding wild flowers. In her hand she had the largest bunch of Columbine that father had ever seen, and she had picked it all from around Old Adam. She said she was going to distribute it among her class the next day. Father then told her the harm she had done, and she was truly sorry. She said she didn’t know that there were some wild flowers which shouldn’t be picked. I thought that was worse than not knowing the queer things they ask in arithmetic.” Grandmother laughed. ‘‘ Let us hope,” she said, ‘‘ that the school-teacher has learned her les- son, and that in future Tommy will know his.” Then we took a farewell look at Columbine’s glory, and slipped away as Tommy lifted up the Arrow-wood branches. CHAPTER XII THE LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER Ir will be Tommy’s birthday on Saturday and he is to have a party. Sallie is going with me, and Philip Todd will be there. Little Trudy has a new dress to wear and also one for her doll. In- deed we are all thinking what we can do to make Tommy happy. Grandmother is going to give him a beautiful book about flowers and birds and Philip has spent all the money he had in his bank to buy him a kodak. Herr Wilhelm Fritz knows that Tommy’s birthday is near and he is holding back some beautiful roses to send him in a basket. I have been thinking that I should like to gather Tommy a bunch of the wild flowers he loves so much, only he seldom picks them himself and it would not make him happy if I were to take him any that he thought were vanishing. 4 He has invited all the boys and girls that live near here, and has written to Francis to say that he would like him to come also. The only thing that makes him feel sorry is that he doesn’t yet know the name of the girl with straight hair whom he saw in Secret Valley. When Saturday morning came I heard Herr 73 74 LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER Wilhelm Fritz whistling very loudly outside the dining-room window. He does that sometimes, and especially when his flowers are growing well. I called out to know if he remembered it was Tommy’s birthday, and then he crooked up his finger and nodded in a way that made me think he wanted me to come out. I said I would as soon as we had had breakfast, and he called back, “rubber boots.” Herr Wilhelm Fritz never thinks a girl can go anywhere unless she wears rubber boots. But I put them on before going out as there is not a single thing that Herr Wil- helm Fritz likes to be contradicted about. I thought he was just going to show me which flowers he had saved to send Tommy, only when we were near Grandmother’s rose garden, he said: “Tf little Miss like ter take ter der pardy der most wunderschoen of all der vild flowers, Wil- helm Fritz is der man ter know where it grows.” He never says wonderful, because he thinks wun- derschoen is ‘‘ near enough.” I could hardly think what he meant. Before this he had always called wild flowers, weeds, and ‘said he had better flowers in the garden. But when he asked: “ Yer vant ter go?” I said yes, although I didn’t know at all where we were going. I waved my hand to Sallie and Grandmother, who were still at the window, and went on with Herr Wilhelm Fritz. He started off toward our LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER 75 own woods, just as Tommy did when we went to see Columbine’s glory. Herr Wilhelm Fritz is a very fast walker, and when he is going he never stops to look at anything on the way. He just walks and walks and walks until he gets there. When we came to the Bloodroot Ridge, he didn’t climb up over it but kept on near the bottom, walk- ing along its side. We went farther down this way than I had ever been before, and he lifted me over the stone wall that divides Grandmother’s woods from Uncle Hiram’s. I said: “Nobody is allowed to trespass on Uncle Hiram’s property, the sign says so.” “ Dat’s all right: you vid me now,” and Herr Wilhelm Fritz laughed a very little. He had carried a flower-pot all the way and a little trowel, and I felt really frightened to think that he might be going to take up something from Uncle Hiram’s ground. The woods here were much thicker than Grandmother’s; Herr Wilhelm Fritz said the trees had never been thinned out, and the weeds had grown wherever they pleased. He said Uncle Hiram couldn’t tell a rose from a cabbage. Then he almost whispered: ‘Little Miss, ve are near der spot. Ve are here. Vat you tink of sech flower as dat?” Already Herr Wilhelm Fritz was down on his knees before the flower; and I slipped down on the ground the other side. There was only one 76 LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER flower, but it was even more wonderful than Col- umbine’s glory. “Tt’s der Large Yellow Lady’s Slipper,” Herr Wilhelm Fritz said, “and it’s an Orchid, just so sure as der ones Wilhelm Fritz tries so hard ter make grow in der glass house.” Its leaves grew out one above the other from different sides of the stem; and while larger, they were no more curious than the leaves of the Lily-of-the-Valley. It was the flower at the very top of the stem that was so wonderful. It was not like a real flower, but like an elf, or a sprite that nobody ever sees; for I think things that people only hear about are surely more wonderful than the ones they sometimes see and can touch. The color of this flower was yellow, and at first I thought it something the shape of a tiny balloon. At its sides there hung down two curling side- pieces quite long, and narrow. *“‘ Lady’s Slipper,” said Herr Wilhelm Fritz, ‘but strings untied,” and he touched the little side-pieces. Then he told me that the balloon-like part was one of the flower’s petals which had taken that funny shape, and that the long strings were other petals. “ Wunderschoen, wunderschoen!” he said again; but not to me this time. He whispered to the flower. He slipped his trowel all around it, and patted ro : TAT ri WW as PLATE XVIII.—'‘ THERE WAS ONLY ONE FLOWER” LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER 77 the earth about its roots and very quickly put it in the flower-pot. “Oh, Herr Wilhelm Fritz,” I cried, “‘ we must leave it here. It is wild,” for I thought he meant to keep it in the glass house. “Ve fetch it back after pardy,” he said. “ It take no harm.” Then I knew that he meant to let me take it to Tommy, and I jumped and skipped about Herr Wilhelm Fritz all the way home, while he mut- tered to himself, and to the Lady’s Slipper. ““ Not like Orchids in glass house, but just so wunderschoen, just so wunderschoen,”’ I heard him saying. He called me back once and told me I must hunt every day for another Lady’s Slipper, “‘ wun- derschoen pink, very like dis one, only it have but two leaves and dey come up from der ground, not out from stem. Very wunderschoen! ” He even told me I might find another yellow one almost exactly like the one he had in the pot, only smaller and a little bit fragrant. I thought how delighted Tommy would be to see this rare flower, and what fun I should have in telling him it grew in a bunk of mine. Herr Wilhelm Fritz put moss around the pot, and when the time came to go I carried it to the party, and Sallie took the basket of roses from the glass house. We were very early; but other children were 78 LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER already there. When Tommy saw what I had for him, he rushed right off to get his book and to see if the flower were exactly the same as the Lady’s Slipper in the picture. Then for the first time since we came to live in the country Tommy quite lost his voice. ““T know its bunk,” I said; but Tommy did not speak, “It’s name is Large Yellow Lady’s Slipper.” Tommy said nothing. “These are the strings of the slipper.’ He kept quite still. “There’s a pink one in bloom, very like it,” I said, “‘and another almost the same, only the flower is smaller.” “Miss Wiseacre,” Tommy said, and Sallie clapped her hands when he found his voice, “ it must have been Herr Wilhelm Fritz who showed you that bunk, and who put the Orchid in this pot with the moss around. It’s a beauty, and the best present I’ve had to-day.” “We are to take it back to-morrow and plant it in the wood again,” I told him. “Then you can fetch it again for my next birth- day,” he said. Sallie gave him the Roses, and a very small boy who had just come brought him a silver pencil. He had many little gifts, but he ran away with the Orchid and took it to his own room. When all the children were there we played LARGE YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER 79 games and there were prizes. Little Trudy be- haved very well until the mottoes were passed around, and then she upset the dish into her lap. She quickly gathered her dress up at the bottom and was running toward the door with them all when Tommy caught her and brought her back. He said that at the last party she went to she was so little that nobody passed her the mottoes, and he supposed she didn’t wish such a mistake to happen again. As soon as the party was over Tommy went to look again at the Orchid, and he found a big bumblebee held like a prisoner in its balloon-like pouch. He kept the Orchid three days, and then he went himself with Herr Wilhelm Fritz and they planted it in its own place in the deep, green wood. Some day, Herr Wilhelm says, the flower will die and a large seed-pod will grow on the stem. Philip Todd now goes with Tommy, and they look at it almost every day. CHAPTER XIII OLD ADAM’S GAIETY IN the city I am sure that most children think a rock like Old Adam can never be gay, because it does not skip, nor laugh, nor sing. It cannot choose which flowers shall grow about it, and even I, who am now almost a country girl, still won- der how it is that Old Adam never looks the same for many days together. When March was here, it had such a solemn look that I scarcely could believe a tender wild flower would grow near it. Yet the Hepaticas were the first of all the flowers that seemed quite pleased to snuggle by the old rock. Near it we found them pink, which is their most lively color, while in Tommy’s other bunks they were more often blue, or white. The Hepaticas, though, are such little flowers and grow so modestly that they didn’t change the look of Old Adam very much. When the trees began to open their leaves, and Butterflys’ Banners grew on its top, and Violets were all around, I did think it looked more cheer- ful. Then when Dogwood and Columbine came Tommy said it was getting frolicsome. They both grow by the side that slants down, and 80 PLATE XIX.—ROCK PINKS OLD ADAM’S GAIETY 81 is not very high from the ground. Now its high- est side is having a turn of gaiety, for lately flowers have opened there which fairly cover it, and the old rock looks as if it were smiling. The name of these flowers is Rock Pinks, or Wild Pinks, which sounds as if they were really meant to grow on a rock. They are a deep, deep pink, and against Old Adam’s gray side they shine out very brightly. They look something like old- fashioned garden Pinks, although their five petals have each but one notch in the middle. The leaves that grow in a circle about the stem where it touches the ground, are narrow and rounded, and IJ saw they were quite different from the smaller, pointed ones that grow on opposite sides of the stem. Besides, when I picked these flowers and had the stems in my hands I found out that they were sticky. Since we came to live in the country I have learned to notice when flower stems are covered with this sticky stuff; for it is to keep little insects from crawling up them and eating the flower’s nectar. These mites like very much to sip sweet things; but they are not like the good bee and butterfly, and don’t know about carrying the golden dust. Wild Pinks can only save their nectar for butterflies by gumming such little insect crawlers close to their stems and holding them there until they die. I hardly think this matters much; for they are very ugly, and not much use to any 82 OLD ADAM’S GAIETY one. One day on a Rock Pink’s stem, and close to the flower, Tommy counted over forty little mites which were quite dead. Only two of them were much larger than the head of a pin. I have noticed, too, that when I hold them in my hand, Rock Pinks do not look nearly so pretty as when we see them growing by the gray rock. It is not only about Old Adam that these flowers are blooming. Quantities of them are out in other parts of the woods, and on some high banks along the roadsides. By Old Adam Columbine is still swaying, sway- ing its red and yellow bells as a jester nods his cap, and beautiful ferns, and plants with leaves like ferns, are growing there. Of course Dog- wood is still hanging down over the spot where I saw the strange girl; and even when the woods are dark the sun peeps in and sits there like a crown. One of the flowers, with leaves like ferns, is called Early Meadow Rue. I have often passed it on my way to the rock, and yet it was only yes- terday that I asked Tommy its name. “We'd miss it about Old Adam,” he said, “ if anything should happen to drive it away. Its flowers don’t look very pretty; but it’s just such plain little things as they which sometimes are most curious. They are only a greenish color, and you see how they grow in long, loose bunches OLD ADAM’S GAIETY 83 at the ends of the stems? ‘They haven’t what I call a real flower look. I mean they’re not beau- tiful, delicate things which make you want to look at them more than you do at the leaves. I’ve seen some grasses that were just as pretty as these little blossoms. ‘“ But the odd thing about them is that they’re of two sorts. Those that are the least pretty are the girl flowers, and the ones that have so many little yellow things standing out and holding the golden dust are their mates, or the boy flowers.” I asked Tommy next if there were anything queer about the Early Meadow Rue’s leaves. “Only that they are divided up into so many round, little leaflets, with notches in their ends,” he answered. “They have a purple, pinched- together look before they unfold. Sometimes I have almost mistaken them for Columbine’s leaves. Then the plant is all about in the spring woods, and when Rock Pink and Columbine blow we pass it nearly every tramp we take. It’s best to know its name, and some time you might pick a sprig of it to put in a bouquet,—that is if Herr Wilhelm Fritz had only a few ferns and wouldn’t let you have them.” To-morrow will be the last day of Sallie’s visit. We have not done nearly all the things we thought we would, although the only one we much regret is not having the picnic, and eating our luncheon on Old Adam. But it has been raining hard, and 84 OLD ADAM’S GAIETY the earth is still very wet. The sun has only shone out again a little this afternoon, just enough for Sallie to run out and say good-by to the flow- ers and places she has known since being here. She wanted to fill a box with some of the earth about Old Adam, so as to take it home and plant it with seeds. She thinks then they cannot help sprouting and growing. Sallie is going from here to the seashore. She will bathe in the salt water every day, and dig in the sand; but there are no woods near-by, and the children there hunt very little for wild flowers. Grandmother thinks though that if she looks in the sandy fields and green places away from the water, she may find very many beautiful flowers. Not just the same kinds as those that grow here per- haps, but others that love sandy soil, and to sniff the cool, salt breeze from the ocean. Since Sallie has been saying good-by to the Rock Pinks she has written a great deal down in a note-book which she keeps tied to her belt. I have not seen what she has put in the book; but I feel sure it is something she wants to remember, and perhaps she will write compositions about it all next winter. She says she has intentions about wild flowers, only she can’t tell them yet. I think she must have written Old Adam’s his- tory and how the rock looks now that its high end is almost covered with Pinks; and also I think she has written about Dogwood and the tissue-paper PLATE XX —GOOD-BYE TO THE ROCK PINKS OLD ADAM’S GAIETY 85 leaves she found under Bloodroot, and perhaps about the Orchid I took to Tommy’s party. Tommy and Philip Todd are both going with us when we take Sallie to the station. Her father is to meet her at the other end of her journey, and this is fortunate, for she has so many things to carry. Philip has given her a rabbit, a pretty little creature, almost all white, and which keeps his nose moving every minute. His eyes are bright pink. Herr Wilhelm Fritz has some Roses and Carnations for her; and Tommy has given her a dear little Pine-tree to plant at the seashore. It is hardly as tall as the rabbit when he sits up, and we all think that it may grow if she puts it where it is not too windy and a little shady. Then, of course, she has her box of Old Adam’s earth. Grandmother thinks Sallie’s intentions are more about this earth, and the wild flowers she will try to grow, than about writing compositions at school next winter. Herr Wilhelm Fritz said to-day that we were not likely to see Old Adam looking half as gay again this season as he does now when the Rock Pinks are blooming. CHAPTER XIV THE FIND BY THE ROAD, AND LITTLE PIPES AFTER Sallie had gone I felt very lonely. For some time I could not be quite happy, although Grandmother reminded me how beautiful the country and the flowers were, and of many things that I had yet to do. It was in the house that I felt most lonely. Out in the sunshine I am al- ways gay. Sallie sent us a note from the seashore. It was written the first evening she reached there, and was very short, so we know nothing more about her intentions, nor how the seeds are growing in Old Adam’s black earth. To-day it is warm for May, and although flowers are blossoming all over the woods, it looks as though the weeds were growing faster. They are getting tangled in among themselves, and some are crowding the flowers out of their right places. There is something very impertinent about these weeds; but Tommy says for me to wait until mid- summer and see how they act then. That will be the time when nobody can get ahead of them. They are not exactly troublesome just now; only it is much harder to find small flowers than before the weeds were grown. Besides, they cover the ground so that I might easily put my feet down on 86 PLATE XXI.—PINK AZALEA LITTLE PIPES 87 a snake. I have never seen one of these creatures yet; although once in the road Tommy showed me a mark which he said had been made by one that had just crossed. It only looked to me as if a stick had been dragged through the dust. Yesterday when I was driving with Grand- mother we found something that quite put the thought of snakes out of my head. This was a flower that grows on a little bush, and is very beautiful. It is called Pink Azalea or Wild Honeysuckle. When we found it we were not looking for flowers. We were just driving along the road in the afternoon, as Grandmother does nearly every day. I had gone with her because I was feeling so lonely without Sallie. At the part of the road where we were, Miss Amelia’s woods come nearly down to its edge, and the bank is quite high. Already we had passed a few Rock Pinks blooming on the bank, and then suddenly I cried, ‘‘ Look, do look, Grandmother!” I knew even then that the flower I saw was a different one from any we had found in the country. It was just like the beautiful Azaleas that florists have in the city and which people send to their friends at Easter. We had gone by so fast that Grandmother did not see the flower. So Patrick stopped the horses, and I jumped out of the carriage and ran back. I climbed up the bank and just as I had 88 LITFLE PIPES thought, the flowers grew on a little bush and looked almost exactly like city Azaleas. They were a real rosy pink, and the little centerpieces grew out very far from the flowers. The name of these little things, Grandmother says, is sta- mens, and the one in the center is called the pistil, These names are not hard to remember, and perhaps if I use them people will know better what I am talking about than if I call them “little things.” The flowers had the faintest kind of a sweet scent, and the leaves, which looked very young and tender, grew together in little bunches on the twigs. I put my arms around the little bush, and had I not feared to crush the flowers, I might have given it a good hug. Then Grandmother called, and I climbed down the bank again, taking her a little sprig of the bush. She was delighted. ‘It’s the first one I’ve seen growing wild for a long time,” she said, “ al- though years ago when this road was cut through we used to call it Wild Honeysuckle Path, because these flowers bloomed so thickly along its banks. Run back and look a little farther through the underbrush, and see if there are not other bushes hidden from the road.” I climbed the bank again and when I had slipped under the barbed-wire fence which Grand- mother had not seen along its top, I was quite in Miss Amelia’s woods. I hardly hunted then LITTLE PIPES 89 a minute before I saw more Pink Azalea bushes. The flowers beckoned to me, and I stepped quickly where they were. A little company of them grew together, and I wished that Grandmother could climb the bank and look at them there. I knew I could never tell her how beautiful they were with the sun shining on them in little round spots. I called out to her, but then I remembered the barbed-wire fence. I picked a few sprays of the clustered flowers and leaves, and went back to the carriage. Patrick soon drove on, but not be- fore both of us had noticed that the spot where I slipped under the fence was just opposite a large Buttonball-tree. Grandmother said: “It’s well, child, you picked only a few of the Wild Honeysuckles, for they, too, are vanishing since the road has been here. I grieve to think what will happen when a trolley line is built.” Tommy had already seen these flowers. He has a bunk for them, although it is not the one which Grandmother and I discovered to-day. What he doesn’t understand is why they are called Wild Honeysuckles. They look different from true Honeysuckle flowers, and are very much like Azaleas. Another name which he knew for them is Pinxter Flowers, and what this means I have no idea. Tommy quickly picked a little lump off the side of one of the twigs that I had brought home. 90 LITTLE PIPES ‘‘ What is it,” I asked, as he put it in his mouth. “It’s a May Apple,” he answered, ‘‘ and has about the best taste of anything that grows this month.” I thought that the next time I found one I would try it myself. The other new flowers we have had since Sallie went away, Tommy calls ‘ Pipes,” because their real name is Naked Broom-rape and that isn’t half as like them as Pipes. When we hold them up lengthwise of the stem they look as if they might be used for smoking. ‘This would not be by real people, of course, but by little woodland folk that perhaps know the flowers, and have ears sharp enough to hear them talking. There are no leaves on these Pipes, and this seems strange, as leaves are one of the things flowers usually have. A sort of roughness grows along their stems, and these, like the flowers, are faintly blue. The Pipes grow down in the grass of the woods, and soft, wet places, just as though they were timid about peeping out too far. Those that Tommy saw first this May were brothers and sisters, I think, in the same Pipe family, for four of them stood up together like steps. There were also buds among them, striv- ing to reach as high as the others. I could only feel sure they were real flowers and not make- believes, when the little one turned its full face. They remind Tommy of the Indian Pipe, or Ghost \ be a ie , Nf f\ Pay \ | y } \ i h uy 5 i Be = PLATE XXII.—NAKED BROOM-RAPE OR ‘‘PIPES” LITTLE PIPES 91 flower, and which must be the one Francis told the story about. Indeed Grandmother thought when Tommy talked about them that he had simply found a company of Indian Pipes, until he told her they were as blue as though Dame Nature had no other color. He said: ‘‘ They’re a soft sky blue.” While Tommy chatted I could not but feel sorry for the four little Pipes. All the flowers that grow about them have leaves. “They must feel very strange,” I said. ““Not at all,” Tommy answered. ‘ That’s just their way of growing.” CHAPTER XV WILD GERANIUM AND POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN WHEN Wild Geranium blooms it does seem as though it wanted to be everywhere. It isn’t con- tent with staying in our woods. I can see it all over Uncle Hiram’s little hill; it fairly covers Miss Amelia’s field, even Tommy’s bunk for Wood Betony; it is out blossoming along the road- sides; in the field where there are cows, and it grows rather close to the stream. The color of its flower is lavender, and it is frail and pretty. It is not exactly the shape of a Buttercup, nor a Wild Rose, and yet it is a little like each. Wild Geranium is smaller than the Rose, and larger than a Buttercup. The flower grows alone, or a few of them are together at the ends of rather thin stems. The leaves remind me of the Geraniums that live in glass houses, or out in the garden in summer, only they have no spicy fragrance. Sometimes, as they begin to fade, white spots come on a few of them. Besides, when the flowers have fallen, and the seed-pods are made, there is a long piece sticking out which some one must have thought looked like a crane’s bill. It is because of these white-spotted leaves, and this long part of the seed-pod that the plant is also called Spotted Cranesbill. g2 POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN 93 Tommy says he has found these leaves a deep wine-color and very brilliant quite as often as white-spotted, but this would not be before mid- summer, or in the autumn when strange changes pass over all the flowers and leaves. It makes me sad even now in May to think that flowers and leaves must all fade, and the earth : again grow bare and cold. So far, since we have lived in the country, and since Hepaticas bloomed, just as soon as some pretty wild flowers were gone, others unfolded to take their places. We see Wild Geranium much more now than Spring Beauty, whose head is heavy with seeds; and other flowers have come with Wild Geranium which were not here with Rue-anemones, or Bellworts, or the Wood Betony. The Geranium is friendly with Rock Pinks, and often I see the two growing in the same places. I think that if we saw fewer Wild Geraniums we would care more for them. ‘They are not a bit shy and hiding like the Orchids, nor wild and fearless like Columbine. They just seem to want to grow everywhere as though they were weeds. Tommy chatted and chatted one day about Black Snakeroot until Grandmother asked him what kind of a plant it was. Then we found out it was Wild Geranium, and that this is simply another one of its names. It has many names, just as it loves to grow in many places. Grandmother told us also that in the south there 94 POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN are several plants called Black Snakeroot. Peo- ple who live far away in the mountains, and who see almost as many rattlesnakes as they do strangers call them by this name, or else Rattle- snake Master, because they think the bites of these creatures can be cured by their leaves and roots. But Grandmother had never heard this pretty flower called by Tommy’s name of Wild Geranium, and she thought it a poor one, even though the leaves have a look like the Geraniums in the garden. Two very old country people whom Tommy knows always speak of it as Alum- root. This is because its roots have such a bitter taste. I said that if I had a pretty flower to name I should never think of looking at its roots first, nor of tasting them. Tommy answered that roots were very wonderful; but, of course, he thought girls would not care for them because they were not as pretty as flowers. Both Tommy and his father belong to a society for protecting wild flowers, and one of the rules is that flowers must not be taken up by the roots for fear of their vanishing. Still they both think it would do little harm if the country people were to gather a few Wild Geraniums to use instead of alum, or to cure snake-bites. Tommy says: ‘It all depends on the plant whether or not it should be taken up by the roots. Of course it would have been very dreadful if PLATE XNIII.—WILD GERANIUM AND THE WHITE FERN POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN 95 Herr Wilhelm Fritz had not carried the Yellow Lady’s Slipper back again to the woods after my party, and planted it in its own spot, because it is so rare and already vanishing. But the Wild Geranium is as far from being rare in this part of New York State as Goldenrod, or Daisies. It isn’t picked enough either by country children to make it vanish, because they know how soon it fades. Strangers to the woods are sometimes pleased with its pretty face and take it away in great bunches. “The flowers,” Tommy went on to say, “ have a queer little way of scattering their seeds. When these are ripe, the long cranesbill pods burst open and out they jump in many directions. They open just as though they were made of elastic. Some- times I have given them a little crack for the fun of seeing the seeds pop out.” The clump of Wild Geranium that I like more than any of the others is near Old Adam, and beside it there are many little fern leaves which are quite white. Tommy doesn’t understand about these little leaves being so white when all the other ferns are green. ‘This is something he is going to ask his father about. When we went last along the little path that leads to the village, and which is a short cut across the back of Tommy’s place, he stopped a minute and called out: ‘So here you are, Poor Robin’s Plantain! ” 96 POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN I looked about to see what he was talking to, for often he says a few words to flowers, although he knows that they can never answer him. A tall flower stood close by the path and looked to me very like a Daisy, only it was not pure white, but a pale violet color. “Let me present Poor Robin’s Plantain,” Tommy said, and he made a bow. I made a curtsey, keeping my back very straight. “Have you met before?’ Tommy asked. “This is the first time,” I answered. “ He’s a friend of Wild Geranium,” Tommy said. “* Then we shall see a great deal of him,” I said. We both laughed then, for we were acting just as we do in dancing-school, only there was no one to see but the flower that looked like a Daisy. “Tt isn’t really like a Daisy,” I said when we were serious again. ‘See the woolly white hairs on its stem, and they quite cover the leaves. I see too that on the ground the leaves grow in a round tuft; the ones on the stem are smaller and pointed.” “ Right,” Tommy said, “all those things are true about Poor Robin’s Plantain. It’s really more like an Aster than a Daisy. It goes to seed and looks gray like an old man almost before Daisies have come, long before its Aster friends of the autumn are here.”’ After awhile Tommy said: “ Perhaps that’s PLATE XXIV.—POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN 97 why it’s called Poor Robin’s Plantain. It’s here before its true friends, although Wild Geranium is like a companion to it since they grow usually in the same places. They’re not one bit alike, however, and belong to different families. Yet it has hundreds of near relatives which don’t come until it’s old and gone to seed, dead perhaps.” This did seem very sad. I told Tommy I should be Poor Robin’s friend, for I had no brothers, nor sisters, nor any family but Grand- mother. We went on to the village then and came back through our own woods. Here we saw a few more Poor Robins, and one of them had grown up as tall as J. The others were shorter. Wild Geraniums were all about. Each day now the woods get more full of green leaves. “When Poor Robin’s relatives come in the autumn there'll be hardly a flower left here,” Tommy said. ‘ We’ll do all our hunting then out in the open, by the roads and in the fields.” I couldn’t quite make out why, when it is only May, Tommy should want to talk so much about the autumn. Summer has not even begun. He “sees signs,’’ he says, and by this I suppose he means that a Wild Geranium’s leaf has turned to bright red and that Poor Robin’s Plantain is here before its relatives. After I have lived in the country a long time 98 POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN I may begin to know the leaves and signs as well as Tommy. It isn’t only all the things that are here, he sees; he seems to see others long before they come. I hope he won’t go on seeing autumn things for a long time yet. I love best to think of the summer, when Wild Rose will bloom, and of the bright warm sun that is shining to-day. CHAPTER XVI PHILIP HEARS ABOUT THREE NEW FLOWERS Ir is the last week in May. In Grandmother’s rose garden there are pink, and white and red buds all swollen and ready to burst out, and two Roses are in full bloom. Herr Wilhelm Fritz is very proud. He says: “Little Miss vill no more go to voods fur der vild flowers, but vill step into peautiful garten.’”’ I should like to visit Herr Wilhelm Fritz in his garden very often, only it is much more fun out in the woods. Grand- mother goes to see him and talks with him every day, and as long as he has his flowers he is never lonely. The woods are very gay now, and some new flowers are there that I have just begun to know. Tommy thinks that after they have faded the woods will look more green, but not so pretty again until spring comes back. Philip Todd has been away for a week. He went with his mother to visit an aunt where he told us he had six girl cousins. Now Philip’s mother calls him her little lamb, and nobody ever heard of his being punished; so Tommy is won- dering how he enjoyed himself when he was visit- 99 100 THREE NEW FLOWERS ing, and had to be polite, and give in to all those cousins. He came back yesterday looking more sunburnt than ever. He says he had a famous time, and that all his cousins are coming to Warley Towers to see him. ‘‘ They must all come together,” he says, “‘ and not keep spinning their visits out one by one the whole summer. ‘They’re only funny when they’re all together.” Tommy asked him how they looked and what their names were. He answered that they all looked like Kitty Contraries, instead of Mary Quite Contrary, and said that if he had to sing about them he shouldn’t mind a bit. He said he called them whatever names came in his head, be- cause six real names were too many to remember. When he especially wanted to make them hear he called out, “‘ whizz, phizz.” “They made green eyes at me,” he told Tommy. Then Tommy asked what were their ages. ‘* All about the same,” Philip answered. “They can’t be,” Tommy said. “ They are,”’ Philip persisted. Then we both knew there was something wrong with those six girl cousins, but what it was we couldn’t find out. We sometimes go to see Mrs. Todd when Philip is in one of his joking moods, but yesterday we knew she was away from home. PLATE XXV.—THE TRUE AND THE FALSE SOLOMON'S SEALS THREE NEW FLOWERS 101 To-day Grandmother and I are going to Philip’s for luncheon. Afterward perhaps I will take Philip in the woods to show him what flowers have bloomed since he went to visit his cousins. When Grandmother and I were there at last and waiting for luncheon, Philip said: “I saw from the train window coming home that Wild Geranium is out, and that Rock Pinks are still here. I suppose Poor Robin must be open by this time.” ‘““ Tt is indeed,” I told him, and then I said that there were other flowers besides which perhaps he didn’t remember. “Let me guess,’ he said. ‘‘ There must be Solomon’s Seal, False Solomon’s Seal and False Lily-of-the-Valley. He called out the names very fast and as though he were a parrot. “ Perhaps Tommy told you,” I said. “ Perhaps this is not my first year in the coun- try,” he replied. “What is each one like,” I asked, for there was still time for him to tell me before luncheon. “Well,” he began, and I knew he was imitating Tommy, “ they’re plants that you can’t miss see- ing in the woods.” “That's true,”’ I said, “ go on.” “ They’re all related.” “ They are, but how do they look?” “ Like plants,” Philip answered. I was glad he had given up mimicking Tommy. 102 THREE NEW FLOWERS “Now I will tell you how they look,” I said, ‘“‘ for I see you have never noticed them for your- self.” ‘““T was thinking of my six girl cousins,” he interrupted. ‘“ Solomon’s Seal,” I began, for I had learned about these wild flowers from Tommy, “is the true one of them all. It is never called false. It looks like a long, bended, double spray of green leaves. ‘The double look it has is because the leaves grow on each side of the stalk. The flowers are underneath these leaves, hanging in pairs together. They are like little green bells, and I think unless I had lifted up the spray of leaves I might not have seen them at all. “The reason it is named Solomon’s Seal is be- cause there are scars on its roots which look like marks made with sealing-wax.” ‘** Do you think they look like Solomon’s Seals?” Philip asked. ‘“‘T’m not exactly sure,” I said. “Then go on.” I told him that Solomon’s Seal was not to be picked. ‘‘ It wouldn’t make a pretty bouquet,” I said, “ although in the woods it looks beautiful.” Philip was sitting, half between a chair and the window-seat. He might have fallen any minute, but he listened to every word. “Ts that all you have to say about it,”’ he asked. I nodded, “‘ yes.” THREE NEW FLOWERS 103 “Then begin about False Solomon’s Seal, and tell just why it’s called false.” “That is because its leaves look almost exactly like those of Solomon’s Seal,” I said, ‘‘ although the sprays of leaves are much larger, and they have no flowers like bells hanging underneath them. Perhaps they wanted first to be Solomon’s Seals and then decided to be something else.” ““ Have they no flowers, Philip asked. “Oh, yes,” I told him, “ beautiful flowers, and much easier to see than Solomon’s Seal’s little green bells. They have hundreds of tiny, white flowers which grow in a bunch at the end of the spray of leaves. Then they have a very sweet scent. You can find them by that alone when you are in the woods. Grandmother thinks they are very handsome plants and that they should have a name of their own. She calls them ‘* Wild Spikenard.’ ” “It’s time to hear about False Lily-of-the-Val- ley,” Philip said. I thought it must soon be time for luncheon, but I told him quickly, that it was a dear little plant, and that to grow well it snuggled up closely about the trunks of old trees, where the soil was rich and moist. It was much smaller than the other two plants, I said, and stood up quite straight, while they leaned over. I said also that its tiny flowers had the same sweet fragrance as the False Solomon’s Seals, and that although they 104 THREE NEW FLOWERS were smaller, they grew in bunches at the ends of the stems and had something of the same look. The only reason, I said, I could think of its being called False Lily-of-the-Valley was because its leaves were so much like those of the true Lily- of-the-Valley. ‘““They’re related,” Philip said, and he was imitating Tommy again. “ Do you think you could tell these three flowers apart,” I asked him. “Solomon’s Seal, little green bells under the leaves,” he began, marking it off on his thumb; False Solomon’s Seal, bunch of sweet, white flowers at ends of the leaves; False Lily-of-the- Valley, the dearest, sweetest one of all.” I was going to ask him if he had listened when I told him about the last one, only then we had to go to luncheon. Philip is very queer sometimes. When we went into the dining-room I saw that he had three of the very flowers we had been talking about in a bowl. He had been out early in the morning with Tommy, and had heard all about them. I said very little to him after that, but he didn’t mind because he knows that Grandmother thinks children at the table should be seen and not heard. When Mrs. Todd talked about their visit to Philip’s aunt she never said a word about the six cousins. After luncheon, when we were out on the lawn, PLATE XXVI—FALSE LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY THREE NEW FLOWERS 105 I stayed very close to Mrs. Todd’s side, and when she was not talking, I said: “It’s strange about Philip’s cousins being all the same age. Those six girl cousins,” I said, as she didn’t seem to understand. Then I gave her arm a little tug, “the six girl cousins he has just been away visit- ing, the ones he is going to have here.” ‘““ My sister has no children,” Mrs. Todd said. “T cannot think what our little girl means.” ““Who did Philip play with while he was away?” I asked. “Why six kittens,” his mother said. ‘ He sat in the sun playing with them from morning till night.” “They were the cousins then,” I whispered to her, for just then Philip and Grandmother caught up with us. CHAPTER XVII THE FIRST DAY IN JUNE JUNE has come; only last night we said good-by to May. It is early in the morning, and I think perhaps it is hardly as warm as it was yesterday. Not a single one of the buds in Grandmother’s rose garden have come out especially for to-day. The Roses there that are full blown opened on one of the last May days. In the city, I remember hearing that June was the most perfect month in the country, but I am wondering how it can be more beautiful than May. I used to think that when June came everything would be changed at once, and that things would be quite different on its first morning from any other morning in the year. I’m sure when I awake Christmas morning that nothing seems at all the same as on other days. But I see now that I must keep my eyes open, as Tommy says, to see why June is more perfect than May. This morning I have been up to look at Old Adam.