Here and there tufts of snowdrops were in full bloom,--white, frail bells, looking as if they had known only cheerless hours and cold sunbeams, and wept and shrank and feared through them.
As they went into the house, Ducie gathered a few; but at the threshhold, Charlotte turned, and saw them in her hand.

A little fear and annoyance came into her face.

"You a North-country woman, Ducie," she said, "and yet going to bring snowdrops across the doorstone?
I would not have believed such a thing of you.

Leave them outside the porch.

Be said, now." "It seems such a thing to think of flowers that way,--making them signs of sorrow." "You know what you said about your father and the plant,--'Death-come-quickly.' I have heard snowdrops called 'flowers from dead-men's dale.' Look at them.