“I don't know, but I'll read you some—some day.”
By that time she was gurgling with delight over a bunch of spring beauties that came up, root, stalk and all, when she reached for them.
“Well, ain't they purty?” While they lay in her hand and she looked, the rose-veined petals began to close, the leaves to droop and the stem got limp.
“Ah-h!” crooned June. “I won't pull up no more o' THEM.”
'“These little dream-flowers found in the spring.' More poetry, June.”
A little later he heard her repeating that line to herself. It was an easy step to poetry from flowers, and evidently June was groping for it.
A few days later the service-berry swung out white stars on the low hill-sides, but Hale could tell her nothing that she did not know about the “sarvice-berry.” Soon, the dogwood swept in snowy gusts along the mountains, and from a bank of it one morning a red-bird flamed and sang: “What cheer! What cheer! What cheer!” And like its scarlet coat the red-bud had burst into bloom. June knew the red-bud, but she had never heard it called the Judas tree.
“You see, the red-bud was supposed to be poisonous. It shakes in the wind and says to the bees, 'Come on, little fellows—here's your nice fresh honey, and when they come, it betrays and poisons them.”
“Well, what do you think o' that!” said June indignantly, and Hale had to hedge a bit.
“Well, I don't know whether it REALLY does, but that's what they SAY.” A little farther on the white stars of the trillium gleamed at them from the border of the woods and near by June stooped over some lovely sky-blue blossoms with yellow eyes.