more might easily be accommodated
within, while a bit of smooth grass outside the entrance almost added
another room, "if you aren't particular about a roof," as Ethel Brown
said.

"Do you suppose Roger has never found this!" wondered Dorothy. "See,
there's room enough for a fireplace with a chimney. You could cook here.
You could sleep here. You could _live_ here!"

The others laughed at her enthusiasm, but they themselves were just as
enthusiastic. The possibilities of spending whole days here in the shade
and cool of the trees and rocks and of imagining that they were in the
highlands of Scotland left them almost gasping.

"Don't you remember when Fitz-James first sees Ellen in the 'Lady of
the Lake'?" asked Ethel Blue.

"He was separated from his men and found himself in a rocky glen
overlooking a lake. The rocks were bigger than these but we can pretend
they were just the same," and she recited a few lines from a poem whose
story they all knew and loved.

"But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,
Where twined the path in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid."

"I remember; he looked at the view a long time and then he blew his horn
again to see if he could make any of his men hear him, and Ellen came
gliding around a point of land in a skiff. She thought it was her father
calling her."

"And the stranger went home to their lodge and fell in love with her--O,
it's awfully romantic. I must read it again," and Dorothy gazed at the
rocks around her as if she were really in Scotland.

"Has anybody a knife?" asked Della's clear voice, bringing them all
sharply back to America and Rosemont. "My aunt--the one who has the
hanging flowerpots I was telling you about--isn't a bit well and I
thought I'd make her a little fernery that she could look at as she lies
in bed."

"But the ferns are all dried up."

"'Greenery' is a better name. Here's a scrap of partridge berry with a
red berry still clinging to it, and here's a bit of moss as green as it
was in summer, and here--yes, it's alive, it really is!" and she held up
in triumph a tiny fern that had been so sheltered under the edge of a
boulder that it had kept fresh and happy.

There was nothing more to reward their search, for they all hunted with
Della, but she was not discouraged.

"I only want a handful of growing things," she explained. "I put these
in a finger bowl, and sprinkle a few seeds of grass or canary s