heaven. All the party stood still in rapturous attention, and even
Cyril forgot for ten minutes his frolicsome and noisy mirth.

Reader, have you ever seen an Alpine pasture in warm July at early
morning? If not, you can hardly conceive the glorious carpet over which
the feet of the wanderer in Switzerland press during summer tours.
Around them as they passed the soft mosses glowed with gold and crimson,
and the edges of the lady's-mantle shimmered with such diamonds and
pearls as never adorned a lady's mantle yet. Everywhere the grass was
vivid with a many-coloured tissue of dew-dropped flowers: pale crocuses,
and the bright crimson-lake carnation, and monk's-hood, and
crane's-bill, and aster alpinus, and the lovely myosotis, and thousands
of yellow and purple flowers, nameless or lovelier than their names,
were the tapestry on which they trod; and it was interwoven through warp
and woof with the blue gleam of a myriad harebells. At last they came
to the cold region of those delicate nurslings of the hills, the
gentianellas and gentians. Kennedy, who had been keenly on the look
out, was the first of the party to find the true Alpine gentian, and
instantly recognising it, ran with it to Violet and his sister.

"There," he said, "the first Alpine gentian you ever saw. Did you ever
know real blue in a flower before? Doesn't it actually seem to shed a
blue radiation round it?"

"How perfectly beautiful!" said Violet; "see, Eva, how intense blue and
green seem to be shot into each other, or to play together like the
waters of a shoaling sea."

"Shall I take a root or two?" said Kennedy.

"Not the slightest use," said Julian; "they only grow at certain
elevations, and would be dead before you got down."

"Isn't it strange, Violet, that Nature should fling such a tender and
exquisite gem so high up among these awful hills, where so few eyes see
them?"

"Just look," said Julian, "how the moss and the grass seem to be
illuminated with them, as though the heavens were golden, and stars in
it were of blue."

While they talked, Cyril dashed past them with all the ardour of a young
entomologist in full chase of a little mountain-ringlet, which he soon
caught and pinned on the top of his straw hat. In a few minutes more he
had added a great fritillery to his collection, and it gave him no
trouble to pick out the finest of the superb lazy-flying Apollos, which
quickly shared the same fate.

"Here's another for you