I had always found these useful, but never quite realized to the full that green or brown is the only consistent undercolour for all field and grass-growing flowers until this summer.  But during days that I have spent browsing in the river woods, while Bart and Barney, and more recently Larry, have been digging the herbs that we have marked, I have realized the necessity of a certain combination of earth, bark, and dead-leaf browns in the receptacles for holding wood flowers and the vines that in their natural ascent clasp and cling to the trunks and limbs of trees.

Several years ago mother sent me some pretty flower-holders made of bamboos of different lengths, intended evidently to hang against door-jambs or in hallways.  The pith was hollowed out here and there, and the hole plugged from beneath to make little water pockets.  These did admirably for a season, but when the wood dried, it invariably split, and treacherous dripping followed, most ruinous to furniture.

A few weeks back, when looking at some mossed and gnarled branches in the woods, an idea occurred to Bart and me at the same moment.  Why could we not use such pieces as these, together with some trunks of your beloved white birch, to which I, via the screen at Opal Farm, was becoming insensibly devoted at the very time that you wrote me?

Augur holes could be bored in them at various distances and angles, if not too acute; the thing was to find glass, in bottle or other forms, to fit in the openings.  This difficulty was solved by The Man from Everywhere on his reappearance the night before the Fourth, after an absence of a whole week, laden with every manner of noise and fire making arrangement for the Infant, though I presently found that Bart had partly instigated the outfit, and the two overgrown boys revelled in fire-balloons and rockets under cover of the Infant’s enthusiasm, much as the grandpa goes to the circus as an apparent martyr to little Tommy’s desire!  A large package that, from the extreme care of its handling, I judged must hold something highly explosive, on being opened divulged many dozens of the slender glass tubes, with a slight lip for holding cord or wire, such as, filled with roses or orchids, are hung in the garlands of asparagus vines and smilax in floral decorations of either houses or florists’ windows.  These tubes varied in length from four to six inches, the larger being three inches in diameter.

“Behold your leak-proof interiors!” he cried, holding one up.  “Now set your wits and Bart’s tool-box to work and we shall have some speedy results!”

Dear Man from Everywhere, he had bought a gross of the glasses, thereby reminding me of a generous but eccentric great-uncle of ours who had a passion for attending auctions, and once, by error, in buying, as he supposed, twelve yellow earthenware bowls, found himself confronted by twelve dozen.  Thus grandmother’s storeroom literally had a golden lining, and my entire childhood was pervaded with these bowls, several finally falling into my possession for the mixing of mud pies!  But between the durability of yellow bowls and blown-glass tubes there is little parallel, and already I have found the advantage of having a good supply in stock.