“I know how you feel,” responded Dorothy slowly.  “I feel as if those columbines were birds that had perched on those rocks just for a minute and were going to fly away, and I didn’t want to disturb them before they flitted.”

They all stood gazing at the delicate, tossing blossoms whose spurred tubes swung in every gentlest breeze.

“It has a bird’s name, too,” added Dorothy as if there had been no silence; “aquilegia—­the eagle flower.”

“Why eagle?  The eagle is a strenuous old fowl,” commented Ethel Brown.  “The name doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“It’s because of the spurs—­they suggest an eagle’s talons.”

“That’s too far-fetched to suit me,” confessed Ethel Brown.

“It is called ‘columbine’ because the spurs look a little like doves around a drinking fountain, and the Latin word for dove is ’columba,” said Dorothy.

“It’s queer the way they name flowers after animals—­” said Ethel Blue.

“Or parts of animals,” laughed her cousin.  “Saxifrage isn’t; Helen told me the name meant ‘rock-breaker,’ because some kinds grow in the clefts of rocks the way the columbines do.”

“I wish we could find a trillium,” said Ethel Blue.  “The tri in that name means that everything about it is in threes.”

“What is a trillium?” asked Ethel Brown.

“Roger brought in a handful the other day.  ‘Wake-robin’ he called it.”

“O, I remember them.  There was a bare stalk with three leaves and the flower was under the leaves.”

“There were three petals to the corolla and three sepals to the calyx.  He had purple ones and white ones.”

“Here’s a white one this very minute,” said Dorothy, pouncing upon a plant eight or ten inches in height whose leaves looked eager and strong.

“See,” she said as they all leaned over to examine it; “the blossom has two sets of leaves.  The outer set is usually green or some color not so gay as to attract insects or birds that might destroy the flower when it is in bud.  These outer leaves are called, all together, the calyx, and each one of them is called a sepal.”

“The green thing on the back of a rose is the calyx and each of its leaflets is called a sepal,” said Ethel Brown by way of fixing the definition firmly in her mind.

“The pretty part of the flower is the corolla which means ’little crown,’ and each of its parts is called a petal.”

“How did you learn all that?” demanded Ethel Brown admiringly.

“Your grandmother told me the other day.”

“You’ve got a good memory.  Helen has told me a lot of botanical terms, but I forget them,”

“I try hard to remember everything I hear any one say about flowers or vegetables or planting now.  You never can tell when it may be useful,” and Dorothy nodded wisely.

“Shall we take up this wake-robin?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Let’s not,” pleaded Ethel Brown.  “We shall find others somewhere and there’s only one here.”