"Here, you perverse boy!" said his governess as she laughingly turned
him around. "Are you looking up into the sky for them? There is a clump
of golden willows right before you, with some rosy maples on one side.
What other colors can you call them?"

Malcolm had to confess that "yellow and pink trees" were not so wide of
the mark, after all, and that they were very pretty. Little Edith was
particularly delighted with them, and wanted to "pick the flowers"
immediately.

"They are too high for that, dear," was the reply, "and these
blossoms--for that is what they really are, although nothing more than
fringes and catkins--are much prettier massed on the trees than they
would be if gathered. The still-bare twigs and branches seem, as you
see, to be draped with golden and rose-colored veils, but there will be
no leaves until these queer flowers have dropped. If we look closely at
the twigs and branches, we shall see that they are glossy and polished,
as though they had been varnished and then brightened with color by the
painter's brush. It is the flowing of the sap that does this. The
swelling of the bark occasioned by the flow of sap gives the whole mass
a livelier hue; hence the ashen green of the poplar, the golden green of
the willow and the dark crimson of the peach tree, the wild rose and the
red osier are perceptibly heightened by the first warm days of spring."

[Illustration: MALE CATKIN OF WILLOW.]

"Miss Harson," asked Clara, with a perplexed face, "what are catkins?"

"Here," said her governess, reaching from the top bar of the road-fence
for the lowest branch of a willow tree; "examine this catkin for