The Mother Forest and the Wild Things It Feeded

The mother forest and these wild things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child. And to please them, pearl gathered violets and anemones and columbines and some twigs of the freshestgr which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair and her young waist and became a nymph child or an infant dryad nymph child, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had pearl adorned herself when she heard her mother's voice and came slowly back, for she saw the clergyman.