“I remember—­a scape—­only this isn’t so downy.”

“They’re pretty, aren’t they?  We must be sure to get a good sized patch; you can’t see them well enough when there is only a plant or two.”

“Helen wants a regular village of every kind that she transplants.  She says she’d rather have a good many of a few kinds than a single plant of ever so many kinds.”

“It will be prettier.  What do you suppose this yellow bell-shaped flower is?”

“It ought to be a lily, hanging its head like that.”

“It is a lily,” corroborated Ethel Brown, “but it’s called ’dog-tooth violet’ though it isn’t a violet at all.”

“What a queer mistake.  Hasn’t it any other name?”

“Adder’s-tongue.  That’s more suitable, isn’t it?”

“Yes, except that I hate to have a lovely flower called by a snake’s name!”

“Not all snakes are venomous; and, anyway, we ought to remember that every animal has some means of protecting himself and the snakes do it through their poison fangs.”

“Or through their squeezing powers, like that big constrictor we saw at the Zoo.”

“I suppose it is fair for them to have a defence,” admitted Ethel Blue, “but I don’t like them, just the same, and I wish this graceful flower had some other name.”

“It has.”

“O, that!  ‘Dog-tooth’ is just about as ugly as ‘adder’s tongue’!  The botanists were in bad humor when they christened the poor little thing!”

“Do you remember what Bryant says about ’The Yellow Violet’?” asked Ethel Brown, who was always committing verses to memory.

“Tell us,” begged Ethel Blue, who was expending special care on digging up this contribution to the garden as if to make amends for the unkindness of the scientific world, and Ethel Brown repeated the poem beginning

    “When beechen buds begin to swell,
      And woods the blue-bird’s warble know,
    The yellow violet’s modest bell
      Peeps from last year’s leaves below.”

Dorothy went into ecstasies over the discovery of two roots of white violets, but there seemed to be no others, though they all sought diligently for the fragrant blossoms among the leaves.

A cry from Ethel Blue brought the others to a drier part of the field at a distance from the brook.  There in a patch of soil that was almost sandy was a great patch of violets of palest hue, with deep orange eyes.  They were larger than any of the other violets and their leaves were entirely different.

“What funny leaves,” cried Dorothy.  “They look as if some one had crumpled up a real violet leaf and cut it from the edge to the stem into a fine fringe.”

“Turn it upside down and press it against the ground.  Don’t you think it looks like a bird’s claw?”

“So it does!  This must be a ‘bird-foot violet,’”

“It is, and there’s more meaning in the name than in the one the yellow bell suffers from.  Do you suppose there are any violets up in the woods?”