“Does the Mavick family also take to botany?”
“Oh yes. Mrs. Mavick is intimate with all the florists in New York. And Miss Evelyn, when I take home these specimens, will analyze them and tell all about them. She is very sharp about such things. You must have noticed that she likes to be accurate?”
“But she is fond of poetry.”
“Yes, of poetry that she understands. She has not much of the emotional vagueness of many young girls.”
All this was very delightful for Philip, and for a long time, on one pretext or another, he kept the conversation revolving about this point. He fancied he was very deep in doing this. To his interlocutor he was, however, very transparent. And the young man would have been surprised and flattered if he had known how much her indulgence of him in this talk was due to her genuine liking for him.
When they returned to the inn, Mrs. Mavick began to rally Philip about his feminine taste in woodsy things. He would gladly have thrown botany or anything else overboard to win the good opinion of Evelyn's mother, but botany now had a real significance and a new meaning for him. Therefore he put in a defense, by saying:
“Botany, in the hands of Miss McDonald, cannot be called very feminine; it is a good deal more difficult to understand and master than law.”
“Maybe that's the reason,” said Mrs. Mavick, “why so many more girls are eager to study law now than botany.”
“Law?” cried Evelyn; “and to practice?”
“Certainly. Don't you think that a bright, clever woman, especially if she were pretty, would have an advantage with judge and jury?”