"The sweetest modesty clings to them, which Alphonse Karr denies to the violet, so that they are almost out of place in a drawing-room; one ought to give them there the shelter of their large, kind leaves." "Hemlock's the only wear," said Louise. "Or last year's scarlet blackberry triads. Vines together," he suggested. "But sometimes they forget their nun-like habit," she added, "put on a frolicsome mood, and clamber out and flush all the deep ruts of the carriage-road in Follymill woods, you remember." "Penance next year," said I. "No, no; you are not to bring your old world into my new," objected Rose. "Perhaps they ran out so to greet the winter-worn mariners of Plymouth, and have been pursued by the love of their descendants ever since, they getting charier. Just remember how they grow. Why, you'd never suspect a flower there, till, happening to turn up a leaf, you're in the midst of harvest. You may tramp acres in vain, and within a stone's throw they've been awaiting you. There's something very charming, too, about them in this,--that when the buds are set, and at last a single blossom starts the trail, you plucking at one end of the vine, your heart's delight may touch the other a hundred miles away. Spring's telegraph. So they bind our coast with this network of flower and root." "By no means," I asserted. "They grow in spots." "Pshaw! I won't believe it. They're everywhere just the same, only underground preparing their little witnesses, whom they send out where most needed. You don't suppose they find much joy in the fellowship of brown pine pins and sad, gray mosses, do you? Some folks say they don't grow away from the shore; but I've found them, I'm sorry to say, up in New Hampshire." "Why sorry?" asked Lu. "Oh, I like it best that they need our sea. They're eminently choice for this hour, too, when you scarcely gather their tint,--that tint, as if moonlight should wish to become a flower,--but their fragrance is an atmosphere all about you. How genuinely spicy it is! It's the very quintessence of those regions all whose sweetness exudes in sun-saturated balsams,--the very breath of pine woods and salt sea winds. How could it live away from the sea?" "Why, Sir," said Mr. Dudley, "you speak as if it were a creature!" "A hard, woody stem, a green, robust leaf, a delicate, odorous flower, Mr. Dudley, what is it all but an expression of New England character?" "Doxology!" said I. "Now, Miss Louise, as you have made me atone for my freedom, the task being done, let me present them in form." "I'm sure she needn't praise them," said I. She didn't. "I declared people make a great fuss over them," I continued. "And you prove it. You put me in mind of a sound, to be heard where one gets them,--a strange sound, like low, distant thunder, and it's nothing but the drum of a little partridge! a great song out of nothing.--Bless me! what's that?" "Oh, the fireworks!" said Lu. And we all thronged to the windows.