It was wonderful to him what sweet and earnest interest this fair young creature took in his pursuits, and how eagerly she listened to his discourse when, down by the beehives, he explained the habits of his bees, and removed screens to let her see the working insects within.
Miss Mary Rosebury took an interest in his garden and in his botanical pursuits, but nothing like this. She did not keep picking weeds and wild flowers from beneath the hedge, and listen with rapt attention while he pointed out the class, the qualities, and peculiarities of the plant.
Helen Perowne did, and it was quite a privilege to a weed to be picked, as was that stitchwort that had run its long trailing growth right up in the hedge, so as to give its pale green leaves and regular white cut-edged blossoms a good long bathe in the sunshine where the insects played.
“I have often seen these little white flowers in the hedges,” she said softly. “I suppose they are too insignificant to have a name?”
She stooped and picked the flower as she spoke, looking in her companion’s eyes for an answer.
“Insignificant? No!” he cried, warming to his task. “No flower is insignificant. The very smallest have beauties that perhaps we cannot see.”
“Indeed,” she said; and he looked at the blue veins beneath the transparent skin, as Helen held up the flower. “Then has this a name?”
“Yes,” he said, rousing himself from a strange reverie, “a very simple, homely name—the stitchwort. Later on in the season you will find myriads of its smaller relative, the lesser stitchwort. They belong to the chickweed tribe.”
“Not the chickweed with which I used to feed my dear little bird that died?”
“The very same,” he replied, smiling. “Next time you pluck a bunch you will see that, though tiny, the flowers strangely resemble these.”