Isabel obeyed, her gaze traveling searchingly along the steep trail.
“Oh, the beauties!” she cried as she discovered the pink flowers. “The beauties! Oh, there are more of them! And still more! Oh, Amanda!”
Before them was Amanda’s haunt of the pink moccasin. From the low underbrush of spring growth rose several dozen gorgeously beautiful pink lady-slippers, each alone on a thick stem with two broad leaves spreading their green beauty near the base. What miracle had brought the rare shy plants so near the dusty road where rattling wagons and gliding automobiles sped on their busy way?
“May I pick them?” asked the city girl.
“Yes, but only one root. I’ll dig that up with the trowel. That’s for your friend’s botany specimen. The rest we’ll pull up gently and we’ll get flower, stem and leaves and leave the roots in the ground for other years. I never pick all of the flowers. I leave some here in the woods --it seems they belong here and I can’t bring myself to walk off with every last one of them in my arms and leave the hill desolate.”
“You are a queer girl!” was the frank statement of the city girl. “But you’re a dear, just the same.”
They picked a number of the largest flowers.
“That’s enough,” Amanda declared.
Isabel laughed. “I’d take every one if it were my haunt.”
“And then other people might come here after some and find the place robbed of all its blooms.”