[CHAPTER XLII]
Water Babies
JACK cleared his throat and began:
“Well, I don’t want to seem to be too proud or conceited, but to me it is quite a pleasant thing to think that the roots of Jack-in-the-Pulpit, or Indian Turnip, which is my other name, have been used as a medicine many a time; and that the roots of my cousin Calamus, or Sweet Flag, are valuable as a tonic. Some of the Arum family like dry soil and some like damp, marshy places. I do not like very dry places myself, and Cousin Calamus Sweet Flag likes his feet wet all the time.”
“Isn’t it wonderful,” Mary Frances leaned forward in her interest. “Isn’t it wonderful, how plants growing side by side are so different?”
“They eat the same things, yet are so different,” smiled Bouncing Bet. “For instance, isn’t it surprising that an onion and a lily may grow side by side? By the way, the Onion and Lily-of-the-Valley and Tiger Lily and Day Lily, and Hyacinth, and Dog-toothed-Violet, and Solomon’s Seal, and, yes, Asparagus, all belong to the same family.”
“Oh,” murmured the girls, “to think that the onion and the lovely Lily-of-the-Valley are cousins and belong to the same family!”
“Yes, and Onion is cousin of Easter Lily, and Tulip too,” Bet added.