106 
MAY TIME 
“But you would prefer blue ribbon?” he com- 
mented. 
I replied that this phlox did not come in that 
colour. 
“Then have quaker-ladies,” said Mr. Percy. 
“Even now, it is perhaps not too late to secure 
them.” 
He urged us to go with him tO' a moist meadow 
some distance back of the Six Spruces, where great 
patches of the ground were turned blue by tiny 
flowers with yellow eyes, their small leaves clinging 
as closely to the ground as moss. 
“These are quaker-ladies, or bluets,” said Mr. 
Percy. “Can you not see what a lovely band of 
blue they would make about your flower-beds ?” 
“But would they live,” Joseph asked, “if we 
transplanted them now, when in flower?” 
“If we did it cleverly enough,” Mr. Percy an- 
swered. 
Later in the day, we returned to the place with 
Timothy and all necessary implements. We then 
moved the quaker-ladies in long, narrow blocks 
of earth. Their roots did not extend very far 
down, and I felt sure that the little ladies knew 
nothing at all about this being their moving day. 
Fortunately, Joseph had made no plans for a 
border-plant about the bed near the point of the 
triangle ; so there we set the blocks of quaker- 
ladies, which formed a band of soft blue about the 
whole. We gave them a long, gentle spraying, 
