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Rosebush and the Pansies and Hollyhock began to question the little Windflower, and this is what she told them: "Oh, a long, long time ago some beautiful goddess grieved very much over the death of some one she dearly loved, and she created in memory of this friend a beautiful flower which she named Anemone. That is our real name." "Oh, how grand is sounds!" said the Rosebush.
But in spite of the low voice of the Rose the little Windflower heard her. "Oh, you are quite mistaken if you think I feel I am beautiful!" she said. "It is of our family I speak; you should see some of my sisters; they are wonderful, purple and so silky they are beautiful. "And other sisters are a beautiful blue. Oh, I am by far the plainest of our family.
The tang of ice was in the air; but in the valleys was all the gorgeous bloom of midsummer the gaudy painter's brush, the shy harebell, the tasselled windflower, and a few belated mountain roses. Long-stemmed, slender cornflowers and bluebells held up their faces to the sun, blue as the sky above them.
She saw the Twin Valleys awakening a marvel she had never yet missed the sheltered blooms and shy crozier-headed ferns deep in the trough of the Abbey Burn, the wilder, vaster spaces of broom and gorse, the windflower and hyacinth in the woods and sheltered spaces of the Glenanmays Water! Ah, she knew where to look for every one. And merely not to be there, made her heart turn to water within her.
Betty is a windflower, Sir Charles, a little tender timid flower, frail and sweet are you not, Betty?" She sat down upon one of the bowls, and pulled her friend down beside her. Sir Charles leaned against the trunk of the tree. "Betty is a little Puritan," continued Patricia; "she would not wear the set of ribbons I had for her; and that hurt me very much."
Sometimes I saw a pale young creature like a white windflower left over into midsummer, upon whose face consumption had set its bright and wistful mark; but oftener two stout, hard-worked women from the farms came together, and detailed their symptoms to Mrs. Todd in loud and cheerful voices, combining the satisfactions of a friendly gossip with the medical opportunity.
There is something between her and the Wind, but I cannot learn her secret." Rosebush held up her head, the Pansies turned their little faces around and looked at the modest little Windflower to see if they could read her secret. "I have no secret the world cannot know," said the Windflower. "All my family love the Wind; this all the world would know if they knew our history."
Crouching there in the scented air, beneath the large, mild stars, she tried to think of Virginia and the coming war, but at the end of every avenue she came upon a morning hour. Perhaps it would be in the flower garden, perhaps in the summer-house, perhaps in the plantation woods where the windflower and the Judas tree were in bloom. Her heart was hopeful.
What new presence quivered in every listening harebell and every fearful windflower? The forest felt a change, for tricksy nymph had proved a mortal love, and put off her fairy phantasms for the deep consciousness of humanity. The wood heard, bewildered. A shudder as of sorrow thrilled through it.
"Such a big name, too, for such a little flower." "Yes, it is big," replied the little Windflower, "but you see we had nothing at all to do with our name; the Wind fell in love with us and opened our blossoms that is the way we happened to be named, I am told." "Oh, how interesting!" said the Rosebush, beginning to look with envy upon the little Windflower.
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