e new estate, but
after the first entry--"Broke ground to-day"--matters seemed to advance
so slowly that she had to fill in with memoranda concerning the growth
of the garden.

Even before the house was started its position and that of the garage
had been staked so that the garden might not encroach on them. Then the
garden had been laid out with a great deal of care by the united efforts
of the Club and Mr. Emerson and his farm superintendent.

Often the Ethels and Dorothy extended their walk to the next field and
to the woods and rocks at the back. The Clarks had learned nothing more
about their Cousin Emily, although they had a man searching records and
talking with the older people of a number of towns in Nebraska. He
reported that he was of the opinion that either the child had died when
young or that she had moved to a considerable distance from the town of
her birth or that she had been adopted and had taken the name of her
foster parents. At any rate consultation of records of marriages and
deaths in several counties had revealed to him no Emily Leonard.

The Clarks were quite as depressed by this outcome of the search as was
Mrs. Smith, but they had instructed the detective to continue his
investigation. Meanwhile they begged Dorothy and her cousins to enjoy
the meadow and woods as much as they liked.

The warm moist days of April tempted the girls to frequent searches for
wild flowers. They found the lot a very gold mine of delight. There was
so much variety of soil and of sunshine and of shadow that plants of
many different tastes flourished where in the meadow across the road
only a few kinds seemed to live. It was with a hearty shout they hailed
the first violets.

"Here they are, here they are!" cried Ethel Blue. "Aunt Marion said she
was sure she saw some near the brook. She quoted some poetry about it--

"'Blue ran the flash across;
Violets were born!'"

"That's pretty; what's the rest of it?" asked Ethel Brown, on her knees
taking up some of the plants with her trowel and placing them in her
basket so carefully that there was plenty of earth surrounding each one
to serve as a nest when it should be put into Helen's wild flower bed.

"It's about something good happening when everything seems very bad,"
explained Ethel Blue. "Browning wrote it."

"Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!

"Sky--what a sco