“Don’t mind me! don’t mind me! Here it is! I’ve found it, Lina, I’ve found it!”
“Let me look!” cried Eva, almost equally excited.
“Come round this way,” said Mark, guiding his sister on firm ground to the edge of the swamp. “If Elgitha had not been so impatient she might have won her prize with dry feet!”
“Veni, vidi, vici!” exclaimed the victorious Elgitha, holding aloft her prize; and, glancing at her soaking feet and stained dress, she continued, “When Julius Cæsar wrote that you don’t suppose he looked spick and span as when he went to dine with Pompeius Magnus.”
“Elgitha thinks the prize well worth the cost,” said Eva, admiring the lovely growth; “look at its delicate fan-like leaves, pale green, with tiny rosy spikes—dangerous beauties, too; look at these poor bodies of slain flies, here, ensnared by this leaf—and these new ones just unfolding their spikes, how innocent they look!”
“Nature’s coquettes!” laughed Mark. “Strange, is it not, to see the traps that are everywhere set for silly flies? But come, girls, we had best be getting home. We have accomplished the object of our expedition, taken our Pergama, as Elgitha would say, and the sooner we get our victorious maid home the better. It would be an ignominious catastrophe to have the discoverer of Venus’s fly-trap in bed for a week with mustard poultices and water gruel.”
Elgitha, elated with her success, protested, but in vain, for Eveline agreed with Mark, and observed that even if they had not been successful it was time that they should be getting home again.
The walk back was accomplished with sedater spirits, and as they neared home the brother and sister insensibly fell into grave discourse, while Elgitha, now rather tired, dragged a little behind.
The course of their future life was what they talked about, and Mark explained the reasons that made him hesitate to go into the Church, the course which his college successes seemed to indicate.
“It seems to me imperative,” said Mark, “that I should be no burden on my mother’s slender resources. I should dearly like to be able to make a home for you both.”