"We needn't put any sunflowers into the yellow bed," Dorothy reminded them, "because almost my whole back yard is going to be full of them."
"And you needn't plant any special yellow nasturtiums because Mother loves them and she has planted enough to give us flowers for the house, and flowers and leaves for salads and sandwiches, and seeds for pickle to use with mutton instead of capers."
"There's one flower you must be sure to have plenty of even if you don't make these colored beds complete," urged Mr. Emerson; "that's the 'chalk-lover,' gypsophila."
"The delicate, white blossom that your grandmother always puts among cut flowers. It is feathery and softens and harmonizes the hues of all the rest.
'So warm with light his blended colors flow,'
in a bouquet when there's gypsophila in it."
The dogwood was in blossom when the girls first established themselves in the cave in the Fitz-James woods. Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith thought it was rather too cool, but the girls invited them to come and have afternoon cocoa with them and proved to their satisfaction that the rocks were so sheltered by their position and by the trees that towered above them that it would take a sturdy wind to make them really uncomfortable.
Their first duty had been to clean out the cave.
"We can pretend that no one ever has lived here since the days when everybody lived in caves," said Ethel Blue, who was always pretending something unusual. "We must be the first people to discover it."
"Uhuh," murmured Ethel Brown, a sound which meant a negative reply. "Here's an old tin can, so we aren't the very first."
"It may have been brought here by a wolf," suggested Ethel Blue.
"Perhaps it was a werwolf," suggested Dorothy.
"A man turned by magic into a wolf but keeping his human feelings. The more I think of it the more I'm sure that it was a werwolf that brought the can here, because, having human feelings, he would know about cans and what they had in them, and being a wolf he would carry it to his lair or den or whatever they call it, to devour it."
"Really, Dorothy, you make me uncomfortable!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.
"That may be one down there in the field now," continued Dorothy, enjoying her make-believe.
The Ethels turned and gazed, each with an armful of trash that she had brought out of the cave. There was, in truth, a figure down in the field beside the brook, and he was leaning over and thrusting a stick into the ground and examining it closely when he drew it out.