The clever pencil pointed, and Ben brought a red clover, mightily enjoying the joke, and thinking that their kind of botany wasn't bad fun.
"Look here, no fooling!" and Thorny sat up to investigate the matter, so quickly that his sister had not time to sober down. "Ah, I've caught you! Not fair to tell, Celia. Now, Ben, you've got to learn all about this buttercup, to pay for cheating."
"Werry good, sir; bring on your rhinoceriouses," answered Ben, who couldn't help imitating his old friend the clown when he felt particularly jolly.
"Sit there and write what I tell you," ordered Thorny, with all the severity of a strict schoolmaster. Perching himself on the mossy stump, Ben obediently floundered through the following analysis, with constant help in the spelling, and much private wonder what would come of it:—
"Phaenogamous. Exogenous. Angiosperm. Polypetalous. Stamens, more than ten. Stamens on the receptacle. Pistils, more than one and separate. Leaves without stipules. Crowfoot family. Genus ranunculus. Botanical name, Ranunculus bulbosus."
"Jerusalem! what a flower! Pistols and crows' feet, and Polly put the kettles on, and Angy sperms and all the rest of 'em! If that's your botany, I won't take any more, thank you," said Ben, as he paused as hot and red as if he had been running a race.
"Yes, you Will; you'll learn that all by heart, and then I shall give you a dandelion to do. You'll like that, because it means dent de lion, or lion's tooth; and I'll show them to you through my glass. You've no idea how interesting it is, and what heaps of pretty things you'll see," answered Thorny, who had already discovered how charming the study was, and had found great satisfaction in it, since he had been forbidden more active pleasures.
"What's the good of it, anyway?" asked Ben, who would rather have been set to mowing the big field than to the task before him.
"It tells all about it in my book here,—'Gray's Botany for Young People.' But I can tell you what use it is to us," continued Thorny, crossing his legs in the air and preparing to argue the matter, comfortably lying flat on his back. "We are a Scientific Exploration Society, and we must keep an account of all the plants, animals, minerals, and so on, as we come across them. Then, suppose we get lost, and have to hunt for food, how are we to know what is safe and what isn't? Come, now, do you know the difference between a toadstool and a mushroom?"
"No, I don't."