42 ANSWERS TO FRANCIS'S LETTER 



in your woods about the stumps of old trees, and 

 if you are not more fond of it than Butterflies' 

 Banners." 



Tommy told Grandmother he thought a good 

 answer to send Francis about Spring Beauty 

 would be that thousands and thousands of them 

 grew through our woods, and about old tree- 

 stumps, and even out in sunny spots, and that it 

 lasted some time after Wind-flowers had faded. 

 Then he wanted Grandmother to say that he 

 didn't care for it nearly as much as for Butterflies' 

 Banners, and that he really loved it most on ac- 

 count of its sleepiness. " You might add," he 

 said to Grandmother, " that the Spring Beauty is 

 always sleepy unless the sun touches it and coaxes 

 it to keep awake. I've read that it turns its blos- 

 soms around to face the sun, only I don't believe 

 that is true." 



I thought Tommy's answer would do, because 

 Spring Beauty had disappointed me by closing up 

 its flowers when I had put a pretty little bouquet 

 of them in a glass bowl. 



Francis told us in his letter about a plant called 

 Large-flowered Wake-robin. " It is one of the 

 Trilliums," he wrote. Now this excited Tommy 

 very much, for although he had read and knew 

 about the same flower, he had never found it. 



" It was when I was looking for Jack-in-the- 

 pulpit that I saw it," Francis wrote. " Its leaves 

 are something like Jack's, only there is but one 



