"Right you are, Davy boy! The nut that stands at the head of the family. Few acorns are fit to be eaten, except by animals, but you see how round and perfect the family seal is, and though the acorn-cup is nothing like the chestnut-bur, or the husk of the hazel, it perhaps would be, if the green acorn itself was not so bitter that it does not need any other protection. The oak is one of the finest and most useful of all trees, and the hazel and chestnut and beech are probably very proud of belonging to the Oak family."
"And how about hickory and walnuts?" asked Davy.
"They are in a family together—the Walnut family. There are three kinds of walnuts—the English walnuts, the butternuts, and these. There are as many as half a dozen kinds of hickory nuts, and some of them are as bitter as the bitterest acorns."
"Pignuts—I know those," said Davy. "They're awful. I tried to eat some last year."
"You gave me one, too," said Prue. "I don't think that was very nice of you."
Davy blushed and grinned, as he recollected the round, puckered face of little Prue, after she had tasted the bitter nut.
"Never mind, Prue; we'll give him a mock-orange some day," said her mother.
"The pecan is a hickory-nut, too," said the Chief Gardener, "a nut that has left all its bitterness in the shell."
"Davy is a pecan-nut," said little Prue. "He's just bad outside."
Then the little party made ready to go home. They had a good way to drive, and it grows chilly on October evenings. How still it seemed to have grown in the woods when they were ready to go. A squirrel scrambled up a hickory-tree, and sat chattering at them as they drove away.