rse the Miss Clarks are lovely about it, but you can't do
things as if it were really yours."

Almost at the same instant both the Ethels gave a cry as each discovered
a plant she had been looking for.

"Mine is wild ginger, I'm almost sure," exclaimed Ethel Brown. "Come and
see, Dorothy."

"Has it a thick, leathery leaf that lies down almost flat?" asked
Dorothy, running to see for herself.

"Yes, and a blossom you hardly notice. It's hidden under the leaves and
it's only yellowish-green. You have to look hard for it."

"That must be wild ginger," Dorothy decided. "What's yours, Ethel Blue?"

"I know mine is hepatica. See the 'hairy scape' Helen talked about? And
see what a lovely, lovely color the blossom is? Violet with a hint of
pink?"

"That would be the best of all for a border. The leaves stay green all
winter and the blossoms come early in the spring and encourage you to
think that after a while all the flowers are going to awaken."

"It's a shame to take all this out of Dorothy's lot."

"It may never be mine," sighed Dorothy. "Still, perhaps we ought not to
take too many roots; the Miss Clarks may not want all the flowers taken
out of their woods."

"We'll take some from here and some from Grandfather's woods," decided
Ethel Brown. "There are a few in the West Woods, too."

So they dug up but a comparatively small number of the hepaticas, nor
did they take many of the columbines nodding from a cleft in the
piled-up rocks.

"I know that when we have our wild garden fully planted I'm not going to
want to pick flowers just for the sake of picking them the way I used
to," confessed Ethel Blue. "Now I know something about them they seem so
alive to me, sort of like people--I'm sure they won't like to be taken
travelling and forced to make a new home for themselves."

"I know how you feel," responded Dorothy slowly. "I feel as if those
columbines were birds that had perched on those rocks just for a minute
and were going to fly away, and I didn't want to disturb them before
they flitted."

They all stood gazing at the delicate, tossing blossoms whose spurred
tubes swung in every gentlest breeze.

"It has a bird's name, too," added Dorothy as if there had been no
silence; "_aquilegia_--the eagle flower."

"Why eagle? The eagle is a strenuous old fowl," commented Ethel Brown.
"The name doesn't seem appropriate."

"It's because of the spurs--they suggest an eagle's talons."

"That's too far-fetche