n, though both
Connie and Brenda had such a narrow escape that Miss Kaye called her
flock to order, and bade them march on once more up the proper path.

The trees gradually began to give way to grassy banks which were
already spangled with celandine, coltsfoot, and actually a few early
primroses; the hazel bushes were covered with catkins that sent
showers of golden pollen over the children when they gathered them,
and in a cosy sheltered spot in the hedge they found a thrush's nest
with three blue eggs in it.

"How sweet of her to build just here!" said Sylvia, looking with deep
interest at the clay-lined structure so cunningly hidden behind a
long spray of ivy, "I can't think how she did it all with her beak.
Isn't she clever? Oh, Connie, please don't lift out the eggs! I'm sure
you'll break them. She won't come back while we're here, so let us go
away, or else they'll get quite cold, and won't hatch out."

"Look what I've found!" cried Marian, climbing up the bank with a
small white starlike flower in her hand. "Isn't it early? It's a piece
of saxifrage."

"No, that's stitchwort," said Sylvia, who had learnt a little botany
at home, and liked to air her knowledge.

"It's saxifrage," said Marian decidedly. "My mother told me so once
herself."

"And my mother told me it was stitchwort."

"My mother's always right. She knows everything!"

"And so does mine! She couldn't make a mistake!"

"You'd better ask Miss Kaye," laughed Linda, "and then she can decide
between you. I've heard it called Star of Bethlehem, so that makes a
third name."

Miss Kaye agreed at once with Sylvia, much to Marian's chagrin; she
did not like to be put in the wrong, and indeed kept obstinately to
her own opinion, and still insisted upon calling the flower saxifrage,
though Miss Kaye told her she would show her a picture of it with the
name underneath in her botany book when they returned.

"You must notice all the things you see or find to-day," said Miss
Kaye. "I shall expect everybody to write a composition next week on
the excursion."

There were certainly plenty of items for the girls to put down on
their lists. A squirrel with a splendid bushy tail ran across the
path, and scrambled hastily up a fir tree, peeping at them from the
safety of the top branches before he made a mighty spring into an
adjoining ash. A heron sailed majestically overhead, its long legs
hanging like those of a stork, and its grey plumage dark against