"Scarcely more wonderful; there might be more delicate and lovely!"
"Farther! Let us go farther!" she urged.
Her cry closed the man's arms around her.
Then there was a long silence during which they stood on the edge of a
small open space breathlessly worshipping, but it was the Almighty they
were now adoring. Here the moss lay in a flat carpet, tinted deeper green.
Water willow rolled its ragged reddish-tan hoops, with swelling bloom and
leaf buds. Overflowing pitcher plants grew in irregular beds, on slender
stems, lifting high their flat buds. But scattered in groups here and
there, sometimes with massed similar colours, sometimes in clumps and
variegated patches, stood the rare, early fringed orchis, some almost
white, others pale lavender and again the deeper colour of the moccasins;
while everywhere on stems, some a foot high, nodded the exquisite lavender
and white showy orchis.
"Count!" he commanded.
Leslie pointed a slender finger indicating each as she spoke: "One, two,
three--thirty-two, under the sweep of your arms, Douglas! And more! More
by the hundred! Surely if we are careful not to kill them, the Lord won't
mind if we take out a few for people to see, will He?"
"He must have made them to be seen!" said Douglas.
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