"Yes, we soaked the leaves in water till they turned into skeletons. We pressed the flowers in blotting paper, and they were often lovely."
"Some of the girls were quite sentimental over them. Cissie Gardiner had a pansy picked from Wordsworth's garden at Grasmere, and a sprig of rosemary that she said came from the grave of Keats. Her aunt brought it to her from Rome, where he's buried. She pasted it on to a piece of paper, and wrote underneath: 'Here's rosemary, that's for remembrance. I pray you, love, remember.' She said Keats was her favourite poet. She thought it was so romantic for him to die so young of a broken heart, and she admired his portrait at the beginning of his poems, and if only she could have lived a hundred years earlier, then perhaps she might have known him."
"It was all Cissie's fault that we lost our collections," said Avis.
"What happened?" asked Patty, who found the reminiscences interesting.
"Well, we used to keep the leaves and flowers inside our books, and look at them during class whenever we had an opportunity. One day, during grammar, Cissie was sitting gazing at her piece of rosemary, and, I suppose, thinking of Keats, for she didn't hear when she was asked a question. Miss Rowe repeated it, and Cissie gave such a start that all her treasures fell from her book on to the floor. Miss Rowe looked very grim, and told her to pick them up, and ordered each girl to take every single leaf and flower out of her book also. Then she made Cissie collect them all, and fling the whole pile into the grate. Poor Cissie was in tears. She tried hard to save her sprig of rosemary: she begged Miss Rowe to let her keep it, and said she'd put it away in her drawer, and never bring it to class again; but Miss Rowe said she wouldn't encourage such nonsense, and the best place for it was the fire."
"It was just like Miss Rowe," said Enid; "she always uses what my father calls 'drastic measures'. Cissie's tired of Keats now. She's made a hero of General Gordon instead, and has his portrait hanging up in her bedroom, with a piece of palm over it. She says she should like to marry a soldier some day, only she'd be so afraid of his getting killed."
"Cissie's a goose," said Winnie; "she can think of nothing but soldiers since her brother went to Sandhurst. She even drew one in my album, and it's not particularly well done. Patty, are you going to paint anything for me, or are you not? I'll leave the book with you for a week, and at the end of that time I shall expect to see something nice."
Patty was rather clever at drawing. She could copy very exactly, and even make original sketches sometimes. Mr. Summers, the art master, thought well of her work, and had praised her study of a group of apples more highly than those of the other girls. It was quite a consolation to Patty to excel in something. She found the afternoon spent in the studio the pleasantest in the whole week, and wished the drawing lessons came oftener. She was not without a secret hope that some of her work might be considered good enough to secure a place in the small exhibition of Arts and Crafts which was held yearly at the school, and to which only very creditable efforts were admitted. The neat drawings with which she illustrated her botany schedules were the admiration of her classmates, though they did not always meet with the appreciation from Miss Harper which they deserved. On one occasion Patty had taken immense trouble to copy a harebell as an example of the order Campanulaceæ. She had shaded it carefully in Indian ink, with very fine cross hatchings, and hoped it might win an extra mark, or at any rate a word of approbation. Disappointment, however, was in store for her. Miss Harper handed back the book with the remark:
"If you would spend less time on drawings, and more on the subject-matter of your exercises, Patty Hirst, I should be better satisfied with your work."
"It's so difficult to remember all those long, hard botanical terms," Patty complained afterwards to Jean. "I love the flowers, and I like to paint them and learn their English names, but I don't care in the least if their stamens are hypogynous or their cotyledons induplicate! I think it spoils them to pull them to pieces. They look so much prettier just as they're growing!"