Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) by Virginia Sorensen Page A

trilliums."
    It was true, and she had to explain. The flowers had to push their stems up through layers and layers of old brown leaves, and sometimes one of the leaves was extra tough and wouldn't move off, so the poor flowers were stuck tight together and couldn't open. The minute Marly broke off the tight old leaves, the flowers opened right away. It was a lovely thing to do, though such flowers always looked rather wrinkled and hurt for a day or so. The jack-in-the-pulpit had the same kind of trouble. Rescuing those odd little jacks, so stiff and tall under the green or purple striped awnings of their pulpits, was more fun than a picnic, though Joe said he'd never in his life heard of doing anything so silly.
    She did it because Mr. Chris made her feel as if every flower was a particular old friend. It was grand to see his face when he noticed something for the first time that year. He could tell things apart that looked exactly alike to Marly—at least for a while—like Dutchman's-breeches and squirrel corn, and Solomon's seal and twisted-stalk with their tiny bells, and violets! Goodness, suddenly everywhere there were violets so thick you could hardly walk without stepping on them. They were white and yellow and blue and purple and spotted and striped. Some were tiny, and some were huge. And one tall yellow flower was called a dogtooth violet but was different and was really an adders-tongue.
    Marly brought Mother a different bouquet every day they were at Maple Hill.
    Sometimes when she walked near home on the first little ridge, she'd get a strange feeling about the world. There were lots of little roads that kept turning in among the trees and brambles and flowers. They were called lumber roads because trucks and wagons had made them years before when the land was timbered. Now trees were growing up again, but there were tangled old limbs in piles and ancient stumps overgrown with lichens and moss and little green leaves and ferns. If she stopped in the middle of all the thousands of things growing in every direction, she got what she called the "push-feeling." Everything was pushing up into the sun, trying to grow taller and bigger. She had never thought about it before in all her life, but all the miracles every week made her think about it. At first the wet brown leaves had lain over everything, everywhere, and then suddenly the peepholes started showing, and then through the peepholes came leaves and stems.
    When she told Mr. Chris about the "push-feeling," he looked very serious about it. "Everything has its own sap, I guess," he said. "It's got to rise, that's all. Nobody knows why. It's like the sun in the morning."
    Marly's really scary adventure happened during Easter vacation. One day she was on the lumber road back of the house when she saw something new and different that even Mr. Chris hadn't mentioned. Bright yellow. A different flower. It was beyond the old pasture, near the woods. It made her laugh to think of maybe finding a flower Mr. Chris had never met. She walked toward it, along the rail fence that marked the edge of Grandma's land. Rail fences were good to keep, Mr. Chris said, because bushes and little trees and things grew in all the corners, on both sides, and made safe places for building nests—as safe as thornbushes. Squirrels could run along the fences, too. Marly saw them trotting along the tops as if they thought the fences were their own special little highways.
    At the bottom of the hill she saw the yellow flowers over the fence. They looked like puddles of gold in among the cattail leaves. She climbed over the fence and tried to go straight out toward one bunch of flowers. But the ground was all oozy underfoot. She felt with her shoe for a firm grassy place. And another one. And another. Finally she could reach the flowers if she stretched, and began to gather some. They looked just like buttercups now she was close, only bigger, with the same bright shine on their petals.