“They seem to fit in everywhere; I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if there were some there.”

Sure enough, there were, smaller and darker in color than the flowers down by the brook and hiding more shyly under their shorter-stemmed leaves.

“Helen is going to have some trouble to make her garden fit the tastes of all these different flowers,” said Ethel Brown thoughtfully.  “I don’t see how she’s going to do it.”

“Naturally it’s sort of half way ground,” replied Ethel Blue.  “She can enrich the part that is to hold the ones that like rich food and put sand where these bird foot fellows are to go, and plant the wet-lovers at the end where the hydrant is so that there’ll be a temptation to give them a sprinkle every time the hose is screwed on.”

[Illustration:  Blue Flag]

“The ground is always damp around the hydrant; I guess she’ll manage to please her new tenants.”

“If only Mother can buy this piece of land,” said Dorothy, “I’m going to plant forget-me-nots and cow lilies and arum lilies right in the stream.  There are flags and pickerel weed and cardinals here already.  It will make a beautiful flower bed all the length of the field.”

“I hope and hope every day that it will come out right,” sighed Ethel Blue.  “Of course the Miss Clarks are lovely about it, but you can’t do things as if it were really yours.”

Almost at the same instant both the Ethels gave a cry as each discovered a plant she had been looking for.

“Mine is wild ginger, I’m almost sure,” exclaimed Ethel Brown.  “Come and see, Dorothy.”

“Has it a thick, leathery leaf that lies down almost flat?” asked Dorothy, running to see for herself.

“Yes, and a blossom you hardly notice.  It’s hidden under the leaves and it’s only yellowish-green.  You have to look hard for it.”

“That must be wild ginger,” Dorothy decided.  “What’s yours, Ethel Blue?”

“I know mine is hepatica.  See the ‘hairy scape’ Helen talked about?  And see what a lovely, lovely color the blossom is?  Violet with a hint of pink?”

“That would be the best of all for a border.  The leaves stay green all winter and the blossoms come early in the spring and encourage you to think that after a while all the flowers are going to awaken.”

“It’s a shame to take all this out of Dorothy’s lot.”

“It may never be mine,” sighed Dorothy.  “Still, perhaps we ought not to take too many roots; the Miss Clarks may not want all the flowers taken out of their woods.”

“We’ll take some from here and some from Grandfather’s woods,” decided Ethel Brown.  “There are a few in the West Woods, too.”

So they dug up but a comparatively small number of the hepaticas, nor did they take many of the columbines nodding from a cleft in the piled-up rocks.

“I know that when we have our wild garden fully planted I’m not going to want to pick flowers just for the sake of picking them the way I used to,” confessed Ethel Blue.  “Now I know something about them they seem so alive to me, sort of like people—­I’m sure they won’t like to be taken travelling and forced to make a new home for themselves.”