hers out just
a little bit and put a few drops of water inside so that the sun
shouldn't dry it too much."

"I should think it would grow better in a dark place. Don't you know how
Irish potatoes send out those white shoots when they're in the cellar?"

"She said she started hers in the cellar and then brought them into the
light."

"Just like bulbs."

"Exactly. Aunt Louise is having great luck with her bulbs now. She had
them in the cellar and now she is bringing them out a pot at a time, so
she has something new coming forward every few days."

"Dorothy doesn't care much for bulbs, but I think it's pretty good fun.
You can make them blossom just about when you please by keeping them in
the dark or bringing them into the light. I'm going to ask Aunt Louise
to give me some of hers when they're finished flowering. She says you
can plant them out of doors and next year they'll bloom in the garden."

"Mother has some this winter, too. I'll ask her for them after she's
through forcing them."

"I like them in the garden, too--tulips and hyacinths and daffodils and
narcissus and, jonquils. They come so early and give you a feeling that
spring really has arrived."

"You look as if spring had really arrived in the house here. If there
wasn't a little bit of that snow man left in front I shouldn't know it
had snowed last week. How in the world did you get all these shrubs to
blossom now? They don't seem to realize that it's only January."

"That's another thing that's happened since my birthday. Margaret told
us about bringing branches of the spring shrubs into the house and
making them come out in water, so we've been trying it. She sent over
those yellow bells, the Forsythia, and Roger brought in the pussy
willows from the brook on the way to Mr. Emerson's."

"This thorny red affair is the Japan quince, but I don't recognize these
others."

"That's because you're a city girl! You'll laugh when I tell you what
they are."

"They don't look like flowering shrubs to me."

"They aren't. They're flowering trees; fruit trees!"

"O-o! That really is a peach blossom, then!"

"The deep pink is peach, and the delicate pink is apple and the white is
plum."

"They're perfectly dear. Tell me how you coaxed them out. Surely you
didn't just keep them in water in this room?"

"We put them in the sunniest window we had, not too near the glass,
because it wouldn't do for them to run any chance of getting chilled.
They stay