"It's a sign of high birth to track strawberry-beds where no fruit is, Mr. Dudley," said I. "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"---- "There's nothing like them," said Rose, gently, as he knelt by Lu, slowly putting them into order; "nothing but pure, clear things; they're the fruit of snowflakes, the firstlings of the year. When one thinks how sweetly they come from their warm coverts and look into this cold, breezy sky so unshrinkingly, and from what a soil they gather such a wealth of simple beauty, one feels ashamed." "Climax worthy of the useless things!" said I. "The moment in which first we are thoroughly ashamed, Miss Willoughby, is the sovereign one of our life. Useless things? They are worth king and bishop. Every year, weariness and depression melt away when atop of the seasons' crucible boil these little bubbles. Isn't everybody better for lavishing love? And no one merely likes these; whoever cares at all loves entirely. We always take and give resemblances or sympathies from any close connection, and so these are in their way a type of their lovers. What virtue is in them to distil the shadow of the great pines, that wave layer after layer with a grave rhythm over them, into this delicate tint, I wonder. They have so decided an individuality,--different there from hot-house belles;--fashion strips us of our characteristics"---- "You needn't turn to me for illustration of exotics," said I. He threw me a cluster, half-hidden in its green towers, and went on, laying one by one and bringing out little effects.