oes rather jump up, doesn't he? Funny little pansy thing! Funny name,
too."

"Not so odd as a few others I know. Kiss-me-in-the-buttery, for
instance."

"Not really!"

"Honest Injun, as Priscilla says."

"These borders are sweet." The girl let her gaze wander up and down
the curving lines of color splashed across the gentle slope of the
hill. "But flowers don't stand much chance in a war year, do they? I
know people at home who have plowed theirs up and planted potatoes."

"A mistake," said Aunt Jessica, shaking the dirt vigorously from a
fistful of sorrel. "A mistake, unless it is a question of life and
death. We have too much land in this country to plow up our flowers,
yet a while. And a war year is just the time when we need them most.
No, I never feel I am wasting my time when I work among flowers."

"But they're not _necessary_, are they?" questioned Elliott. "Of
course, they're beautiful; but I thought luxuries had to go, just
now."

"Flowers a luxury? Oh, my dear little girl, put that notion out of
your head quickly! American-beauty roses may be a luxury, and white
lilacs in the dead of winter, but garden flowers, never! Wait till you
see the daffodils dancing under those apple trees next spring!" And
she nodded up the grassy slope at the apple trees as though she and
they shared a delightful secret that Elliott did not yet know.

Privately the girl held a different opinion about next spring, but she
wondered why Aunt Jessica should talk of daffodils. They seemed rather
lugged into a conversation in July.

Mother Jess reached with her clawlike weeder far into the border. Her
voice came back over her shoulder in little gusts of words as she
worked. "Did you ever hear that saying of the Prophet?--'He that hath
two loaves let him sell one and buy a flower of the narcissus; for
bread is food for the body, but narcissus is food for the soul.'
That's the way I feel about flowers. They are the least expensive way
of getting beauty and we can't live without beauty, now less than
ever, since they have destroyed so much of it in France. There! now I
must stop for to-day. Don't you want to take this culling-basket and
pick it full of the prettiest things you can find for Mrs. Gordon?
Perhaps you would like to take it over to her, too. It isn't a very
long walk."

"But I've never met her."

"That won't matter. Just tell her who you are and that you belong to
us. Mrs. Gordon loves flowers, though she hasn't mu