are thoroughly ashamed, Miss Willoughby,
is the sovereign one of our life. Useless things? They are worth king
and bishop. Every year, weariness and depression melt away when atop of
the seasons' crucible boil these little bubbles. Isn't everybody better
for lavishing love? And no one merely likes these; whoever cares at all
loves entirely. We always take and give resemblances or sympathies from
any close connection, and so these are in their way a type of their
lovers. What virtue is in them to distil the shadow of the great pines,
that wave layer after layer with a grave rhythm over them,
into this delicate tint, I wonder. They have so decided an
individuality,--different there from hot-house belles;--fashion strips
us of our characteristics"----

"You needn't turn to me for illustration of exotics," said I.

He threw me a cluster, half-hidden in its green towers, and went on,
laying one by one and bringing out little effects.

"The sweetest modesty clings to them, which Alphonse Karr denies to the
violet, so that they are almost out of place in a drawing-room; one
ought to give them there the shelter of their large, kind leaves."

"Hemlock's the only wear," said Louise.

"Or last year's scarlet blackberry triads. Vines together," he
suggested.

"But sometimes they forget their nun-like habit," she added, "put on a
frolicsome mood, and clamber out and flush all the deep ruts of the
carriage-road in Follymill woods, you remember."

"Penance next year," said I.

"No, no; you are not to bring your old world into my new," objected
Rose. "Perhaps they ran out so to greet the winter-worn mariners of
Plymouth, and have been pursued by the love of their descendants ever
since, they getting charier. Just remember how they grow. Why, you'd
never suspect a flower there, till, happening to turn up a leaf, you're
in the midst of harvest. You may tramp acres in vain, and within a
stone's throw they've been awaiting you. There's something very
charming, too, about them in this,--that when the buds are set, and at
last a single blossom starts the trail, you plucking at one end of the
vine, your heart's delight may touch the other a hundred miles away.
Spring's telegraph. So they bind our coast with this network of flower
and root."

"By no means," I asserted. "They grow in spots."

"Pshaw! I won't believe it. They're everywhere just the same, only
underground preparing their little witnesses, whom they send out where
mos