"What will the big girls say?" gasped Marian.
"About as much as your doll in there," laughed Miss Smith, adding seriously, "I won't expect too much of you, Marian, but you may as well be in the class and learn all you can."
On Monday morning, although the big girls smiled and the little girls stared, Professor Lee became a member of the botany class and learned to press the wild flowers.
"I won't have the most perfect lessons of anybody in the class," Marian confided to her doll, "because the big girls know so much; but I'll try and have the best specimens in my herbarium. I can do that, I am sure. I have just got to do something better than any one else in school before I go home."
The following Saturday the doll listened with unchanging face to a confession. "Every one of the big girls can press specimens better than I can. Their violet plants look like pictures but mine look like hay. I guess Uncle George will be discouraged. I don't do anything best. A robin is building a nest just outside the window where my seat is in school and I forgot to study my spelling lesson. Of course I missed half the words. It was the robin's fault. She ought to keep away from school children."
CHAPTER XVII
THE COMPOSITION ON WILD FLOWERS
All the children in Marian's class were writing in their copy-books "Knowledge is Power." The pens squeaked and scratched and labored across pages lighted by June sunshine. The little girls' fingers were sticky and boy hands were cramped. It was monotonous work. The "K" was hard to make and the capital "P" was all flourishes.