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This bridge was so entirely and evenly grown over with short thick moss that it might seem cut of some strange kind of living green velvet, and here and there it was quaintly embroidered with small blossoming tufts of white alyssum, or feathers of ferns and maiden's-hair which shook and trembled to every breeze.
She loved the rich mingled scents of wallflower and alyssum and lemon verbena; and, as they walked about, she tucked a velvet plume of dark heliotrope into the belt of her thin white gown. "My first colour!" she said to Clifford. Ruth assumed charming, older-sister airs with Teddy. She laughed at his comments, and quoted him to Martie: "He says he's going to learn to ride Whitey!"
Agnes had learned of the Superior of the Convent the art of reading writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl in her times, and the moon had that dazzling clearness which revealed every letter. She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white blossoming alyssum which filled its marble crevices, while she read and seriously pondered the contents of the paper.
One stepped out from the south door of the sitting-room to find narrow beds for all sorts of summer blooms hugging the house, and looked about to see farther on occasional other beds. Everything was represented in her flower garden, from sweet alyssum and mignonette to roses and lilies, just as a little of all sweet qualities mingled themselves in her disposition.
And phlox Sally, you must have masses of phlox and candy-tuft, and mignonette, and sweet alyssum " "And love-in-a-mist, and forget-me-nots, and sweet peas, and hollyhocks. Only the hollyhocks are not going to be in the garden, but in a long row back there, to screen away the kitchen garden from the lawn. Only oh, dear, you have to wait so long for the things you want most!
Before he recovered his breath and self-possession she was at his side with the flowers she had hastily plucked scarlet geranium, heliotrope, sweet alyssum, the gorgeous yellow and orange poppy, and the lovely blue and white lupine.
Flowers we would have pretty much every-where hollyhocks in odd corners; delphinium and foxglove along the stone walls; bunches of calliopsis and bleeding-heart and peonies; borders of phlox and alyssum; beds of sweet-williams and corn-flowers and columbines all those lovely, old-fashioned things, with the loveliest old-fashioned names in the world.
Myriads of flowers gleam in their own atmosphere of living light, like jewels among the rich herbage, so that the feet can hardly be set down without crushing scores of them: the Orchis rubra with its splendid spike of crimson blossoms, the bee and spider orchises in great variety, whose flowers mimic the insects after whom they are named, sweet-scented alyssum, golden buttercups and hawkweeds, Roman daisies, larger and taller than the English ones, with the bold wide-eyed gaze you see in the Roman peasant-girls, scarlet poppies glowing in a sunshine of their own, like flames in the heart of a furnace, vetches bright azure and pale yellow, dark blue hyacinths, pink geraniums, and "moonlit spires of asphodel," suggestive of the flowery fields of the immortals.
Portulaca, sweet alyssum, Shirley poppies, and the annual gaillardias belong to this class, as well as single petunias of the inexpensive varieties used to edge shrubberies, and dwarf nasturtiums.
All the old-time flowers are favorites there and refuse to be displaced by any newcomer. Sweet alyssum and candytuft spread carpets of bloom along the neat garden walks, hollyhocks and dahlias look boldly out to the streets, while the old-fashioned sweet-scented roses grow on great bushes which have been undisturbed for three or more generations.
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