EARLY AUGUST DAYS 
21S 
and, had this not happened too early In the morn- 
ing for any one to be about, I think he would have 
been here to greet their first unfolding. 
“You will have them every year now,” he told 
us, “without further trouble. They are perennials, 
and very hardy. Besides, they seem to have taken 
well to this moist, rich soil. You would be sur- 
prised, I know,” he continued, “if I should tell you 
that they are wild flowers.” 
Joseph asked if this were a joke. 
“Not at all,” Mr. Percy answered. “They are 
as much wild flowers as hepaticas and spring- 
beauties, and grow in swampy, marsh-like places, 
instead of In the woods. Sometimes I have found 
them in such wet meadows that It was impossible 
to reach them without rubber boots. My father,” 
Mr. Percy went on, “is very proud of the rose'- 
mallows at Nestly Heights. He has them set, you 
know, about the ponds. He praises the gardeners 
as though they were as responsible for the beauty 
of the mallows as they are for the blue colour of 
our most petted hydrangeas. Some day I will take 
him to a swamp miles from here, where they grow 
twice as large as with us. Many of them there are 
eight feet tall.” 
Joseph glanced at me. He must have been won- 
dering what Mr. Hayden would say when shown 
some of his favourites thriving In a neglected 
swamp. The fact that rose-mallows are wild 
flowers makes Joseph and me like them better than 
