“Well! we wouldn’t have thought it of you, Mose,” grieved Paul, who feared he would have to go without fish.
“You are slick, all right, Mose, ’cause you fooled every one of us boys,” laughed Billy.
“And what’s more, father and mother must have been in the secret, or how could father have served the phony fish to the right ones,” commented Elizabeth, who enjoyed a harmless, practical joke.
Mose now brought in several nice hot flounders for the hungry boys, who ate with unabated appetites. Indeed, they had so appreciated the trick that the chef really rose several points in their estimation.
The fake mola had caused such a disturbance that Elizabeth almost forgot the queer little plant in the birchen case. But supper once over, she remembered it.
“Look, mother, what do you suppose this is?” asked she.
“Get out your flower-book and see what it says about the sun-dew; this is the rotundifolia variety.”
“Why, the book says that the sun-dew is carnivorous! So that is what it was doing to the poor little fly?” said the girl, half shocked and half amazed.
The boys crowded about at this, to see the little reddish plant which suddenly became endowed with immense interest.
“Mother, do you remember that story in some magazine—about the giant carnivorous plants?” asked Fred.