really it does seem to be so! I shall always
think of Vermont as the State of wild lawns and gardens.

[Illustration: map]*

Did you ever see what they call the "jewel flower?" I saw it for the
first time in Vermont: a delicate little yellow bell of a thing; but its
stem is a magician. Dip it in water, and in a few minutes it will have
collected enough solid-looking pearls for a necklace. It was Peter who
knew this, and told Pat, whereupon she had the Grayles-Grice stopped for
an experiment, and the whole procession halted. The brook proved the
truth of Peter's statement. It's extraordinary the country as well as
town lore Peter has! At least I wondered at it, until I heard something
of what his adventurous life has been.

If we discovered one new flower that day, we discovered dozens; new to
Jack and me, I mean: tall, rose-red ones like geraniums, of which the
country people couldn't tell the names; purple ones like plumes; white
ones like blond bluebells; and others that looked like nothing but
themselves. All the old friends were there, too: wild roses,
honeysuckle, convolvulus, growing in the midst of feathery ferns and
young-gold bracken. Never did any earthly gardener plant with such an
eye to colour as the planting of what Vermont farmers call their "wild
lots." There were apple trees, very big and of strange, dancing shapes,
almost like the olives of Italy; and after we had left the garden
country for a country of hills with steep gradients, we came to
"maple-sugar country." (I shall send you a box of that maple sugar,
which we bought at a pretty little place named Peru. But I'm afraid it's
last year's.)

Despite their steepness the roads were well made, humping themselves up
very high, and then sinking comfortably down into what they call "water
breaks" or "thank you, ma'ams!" I'd often heard that last expression;
but being English, Jack had to have it explained to him that the horse
was supposed to rest there a minute and give thanks for the respite from
pulling.

It will make you feel as if I'd rubbed a file across your front teeth,
my dear, when I tell you that we shot out of maple-sugar country into
marble country. But isn't that better than mixing them up together? The
marble's very pretty, and you don't have to eat it. You walk on it, when
you come to Manchester-in-the-Mountains. Before you get there, though,
you see many other mountains, which don't belong to Manchester. They are
bold and big enoug