"Very true, Miss Willoughby. I was born pretty high up in the Green Mountains."
"And so keep your memory green?"
"Strawberries in June," said Rose, good-naturedly. "But fruit out of season is trouble out of reason, the Dream-Book says. It's May now, and these are its blossoms."
"Everybody makes such a fuss about ground-laurel!" said I. "I don't see why, I'm sure. They're never perfect. The leaf is hideous,—a stupid duenna! You get great green leaves, and the flowers all white; you get deep, rosy flowers, and the leaves are all brown and bitten. They're neither one thing nor another. They're just like heliotropes,—no bloom at all, only scent. I've torn up myriads, to the ten stamens in their feathered case, to find where that smell comes from,—that is perfectly delicious,—and I never could. They are a cheat."
"Have you finished your tirade?" asked Rose, indifferently.
"I don't believe you mean so," murmured Lu. "They have a color of their own, almost human, infantine; and when you mass them, the tone is more soft and mellow than a flute. Everybody loves May-flowers."
"Just about. I despise flutes. I like bassoons."
"They are prophets of apple-blossoms."
"Which brings them at once into the culinary."
"They are not very showy," said Mr. Dudley; "but when we remember the Fathers"——