She led him into a swampy half-open space in the woods, stopped and stepped aside.

He uttered a cry of surprised delight.
A few decaying logs were scattered around, the grass grew in tufts long and fine.

Blue flags waved, clusters of cowslips nodded gold heads, but the whole earth was purple with a thick blanket of violets nodding from stems a foot in length.

Elnora knelt and slipping her fingers between the leaves and grasses to the roots, gathered a few violets and gave them to Philip.
"Can your city greenhouses surpass them ?" she asked.
He sat on a log to examine the blooms.
"They are superb!" he said.

"I never saw such length of stem or such rank leaves, while the flowers are the deepest blue, the truest violet I ever saw growing wild.