“Throw her a bit, papa,” whispered Bell; and, as he did so, Teresita caught the piece of silver very deftly, and ran excitedly back to the centre of the chattering group in front of the house.
“How intense everything is in California! Do you know what I mean, mamma?” said Bell. “The fruit is so immense, the cañons so deep, the trees so big, the hills so high, the rain so wet, and the drought so dry.”
“The fleas so many, the fleas so spry,” chanted Jack, who had perceived that Bell was talking in rhyme without knowing it. “California is just the place for you, Bell; it gives you a chance for innumerable adjectives heaped one on the other.”
“I don’t always heap up adjectives,” replied Bell, with dignity. “When I wish to describe you, for instance, I simply say ‘that hateful boy,’ and let it go at that.”
Jack retired to private life for a season.
“I’d like to paint a picture of Teresita,” said Margery, who had a pretty talent for sketching, “and call it The Summer Child, or some such thing. I should think the famous old colour artists might have loved to paint this gorgeous flame-tinted poppy.”
“Not poppy,—eschscholtzia,” corrected Jack, coming rapidly to the surface again, after Bell’s rebuke, and delivering himself of the tongue-confusing word with a terrible grimace.
“I’m not writing a botany,” retorted Margery; “and I can never remember that word, much less spell it. I don’t see how it grows under such an abominable Russian name. It’s worse than ichthyosaurus. Do you remember that funny nonsense verse?—
‘I is for ichthyosaurus,
Who lived when the world was all porous;
But he fainted with shame
When he first heard his name,
And departed a long while before us.’”
“The Spaniards are more poetic,” said Aunt Truth, “for they call it la copa de oro, the golden cup. Oh, see them yonder! It is like the Field of the Cloth of Gold.”