286 THE LAND'S END 



were violet, forget-me-not, bird's-eye and ground-ivy 

 all growing together. 



The poor girl did not know much less than most, 

 perhaps even less than Billy of the charlock bouquet 

 who had got the one parrot phrase that all flowers are 

 beautiful in his brain ; but that which I sought in her 

 and in the pretty, lively Cornish, kitten-like girl 

 already described, and in dozens more, does not come 

 from reading books, nor is it found only in the intelli- 

 gent. That something lacking in them which you can 

 find by seeking in the more stolid and seemingly duller 

 Anglo-Saxon peasant is of the race. 



But enough of adventures in this vain quest of the 

 elusive spirit of romance or poetry. It still remains 

 to speak of the early spring flowers, and of the blue 

 one, which was no common and universal flower like 

 those I have just mentioned, but one I had never seen 

 growing wild until I came to Cornwall. This was the 

 vernal squill, a small blue lily-shaped flower of a deli- 

 cate, very beautiful blue, hardly deeper than that of 

 the hairbell, growing in clusters of three or four on 

 a polished stalk an inch or two or three in height. 

 The stem varies in length according to the depth of 

 the grass or herbage or dwarf heath among which it 

 grows, as the flower likes to keep itself on a level 

 with the surface of the grass, or nestling in it, like 

 a stone in its setting. In April I first found it, a 

 flower or two here and there, in small depressions and 

 on sunny slopes sheltered from the blast by the huge 

 rocks of the headlands : it was one of the few first 

 early flowers which produce that most fairy-like 



