The sight would have driven a royal florist mad with joy: a hillside that was a swaying mass of radiant bloom, a joyous carnival of vivid colour, in which the thousand golden goblets, turned upward to the sun, were dancing, and glowing, and shaming out of countenance the purple and blue and pink masses which surrounded them on every side.
“You know Professor Pinnie told us that every well-informed young girl should know at least the flora of her own State,” said Jack, after the excitement had subsided.
“Well, one thing is certain: Professor Pinnie never knew the state of his own flora, or at least he kept his wife sorting and arranging his specimens all the time; and I think he’s a regular old frump,” said Polly, irreverently, but meeting Aunt Truth’s reproving glance, which brought a blush and a whispered “Excuse me,” she went on, “Well, what I mean is, he doesn’t know any more than other people, after all; for he cares for nothing but bushes and herbs and seeds and shrubs and roots and stamens and pistils; and he can’t tell whether a flower is lovely or not, he is so crazy to find out where it belongs and tie a tag round it.”
“I must agree with Polly,” laughed Jack. “Why, I went to ride with him one day in the Cathedral Oaks, and he made me get off my horse every five minutes to dig up roots and tie them to the pommel of his old saddle, so that we came into town looking like moving herbariums. The stable-man lifted him on to his horse when he started, I suppose, and he would have been there yet if he hadn’t been helped off. Bah!” For Jack had a supreme contempt for any man who was less than a centaur.
By this time they had turned off the main thoroughfare, and were travelling over a bit of old stage road which was anything but easy riding. There they met some men who were driving an enormous band of sheep to a distant ranch for pasture, which gave saucy Polly the chance to ask Dr. Winship, innocently, why white sheep ate so much more than black ones.
He fell into the trap at once, and answered unsuspectingly, in a surprised tone, “Why, do they?” giving her the longed-for opportunity to respond, “Yes, of course, because there are so many more of ’em; don’t you see?”
“You are behind the times, Dr. Paul,” said Jack. “That’s an ancient joke. Just look at those sheep, sir. How many are there? Eight hundred, say?”
“Even more, I should think,—a thousand, certainly; and rather thin they look, too.”
“I should imagine they might,” said Bell, sympathetically. “When I first came to California I never could see how the poor creatures found anything to eat on these bare, brown hillsides, until the farmers showed me the prickly little burr clover balls that cover the ground. But see, mamma! there are some tiny lambs, poor, tired, weak-legged little things; I wonder if they will live through the journey.”
“Which reminds me,” said Jack, giving Villikins a touch of the whip, “that nothing is so calculated to disturb your faith in and love for lambs as life on a sheep ranch. Innocent! Good gracious! I never saw such—such—”