“Posies, girl, for you.”
“Thank you, niño. You’re a darling, darling baby! I do love flowers better than—than almost anything, I guess.”
Teddy climbed up beside her and watched as, almost unconsciously, she began to pull one of the strange blooms to pieces.
“Girl! No, no! You mustn’t bweak them. It might hurt them, my muvver says.”
“I’m not hurting it, Teddy. See? Little by little, I take it apart, gently, for I’m trying to find out its name. Though, maybe, Señora, you know it?”
“No. I’ve not seen them often. But—at your age—do you understand botany?”
“I don’t understand it—much. Only, most always, if I have a new plant I can find its class and, often, its genus. Like this. Don’t you know?”
“Once I knew. I was a teacher in my girlhood.” The sight of the child analyzing the desert flower had carried the exile’s thoughts back over many years, to a pleasant New England schoolroom and a class of eager maidens who learned from her. Yet she promptly banished her momentary regret, reflecting: “The cactus is very beautiful! And my blessings do outnumber my deprivations.”
It was a wonderfully skillful young hand which dissected the unknown flower and, when it lay with all its parts separated and arranged, Mrs. Burnham’s interest was as great as Teddy’s. Eager to see, he thrust his dark head between Carlota and her “subject” in a way that hindered her study, so she left its finishing until another time.
“I’ll put the rest of the blossoms in my box, Teddy, but I’m quite sure it’s an orchid. I think it is a ‘Plantanthera.’ I do miss my father so about flowers. He knows everything and everyone there is, I s’pose.”