Raleigh
calls them. When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in eider, that I
may be like all the boughs and branches. How buoyant the earth must be,
when every twig becomes a feather!" And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh,
singing, "Oh, would I had wings like a dove!"
"And here are those which, if not daffodils,
yet
"'Come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty,'"
he said, giving her a basket of hepaticas and winter-green.
Marguerite danced away with the purple trophy, and, emptying a carafe
into a dish of moss that stood near, took them to Mrs. Laudersdale, and,
sitting on the footstool, began to rearrange them. It was curious to
see, that, while Mrs. Laudersdale lifted each blossom and let the stem
lie across her hand, she suffered it to fall into the place designated
for it by Marguerite's fingers, that sparkled in the mosaic till double
wreaths of gold-threaded purple rose from the bed of vivid moss and
melted into a fringe of the starry spires of winter-green.
"Is it not sweet?" said she then, bending over it.
"They have no scent," said her mother.
"Oh, yes, indeed! the very finest, the most delicate, a kind of aerial
perfume; they must of course alchemize the air into which they waste
their fibres with some sweetness.
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