146 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
There a long-forgotten wood-road led to my Land of 
Heart’s Desire. Parting the branches, I would step 
into the hush of the sleeping wood, pushing my way 
through masses of glossy, dark-green Christmas 
ferns and clumps of feathery, tossing maidenhair. 
Black-throated blue warblers sang above, and that 
ventriloquist, the oven bird, would call from appar- 
ently a long way off, ‘“Teacher, teacher, teacher,”’ 
ending with a tremendous “TEACH!”’ right under 
my feet. 
At last there would loom up through the green 
tangle a squat broken white pine. That was my 
landmark. I would push my way through a tangle of 
sanicle, and beyond the trunk of a slim elm catch a 
gleam of white in the dusk. There, all rose-red and 
snow-white, with parted lips, waited for me the 
queen flower of the woods, the Cypripedium regina, 
the loveliest of all our orchids. Two narrow, white, 
beautiful curved petals stretched out at right angles, 
while above them towered a white sepal, the three 
together making a snowy cross. Below this cross 
hung the lip of the flower, a milk-white hollow shell 
fully an inch across and an inch deep, veined with 
crystalline pink which deepened into purple, growing 
more intense in color until the veins massed in a net- 
work of vivid violet just under the curved lips 
kissed by many a wandering wood-bee. Inside the 
shell were spots of intense purple, showing through 
the transparent walls. The other two white sepals 
were joined together and hung as a single one behind 
the lip. 
