Matthew—what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?”
It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,—it was long before Anne could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,—in time to hear her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew had fallen across the threshold. --Anne of Green Gables
“Cousin Jimmy is fixing up the garden. He lets me help him and I have a little flower bed of my own. I always run out first thing every morning to see how much the things have grown since yesterday. Spring is such a happyfying time isnt it, Father. The little Blue People are all out round the summer house. That is what Cousin Jimmy calls the violets and I think it is lovely. He has names like that for all the flowers. The roses are the Queens and the June lilies are the Snow Ladies and the tulips are the Gay Folk and the daffodils are the Golden Ones and the China Asters are My Pink Friends. --Emily of New Moon
Mrs. Lynde often calls these June Lilies.
There is something poignant about four girls, full of life and dreams for the future, coming upon an abandoned garden once loved by another young girl who is now long gone:
"...hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to the south was a little corner and in it a garden...or what had once been a garden...
"There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish wind-swept bloom above the lush green grass."
Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery
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