"Does anybody doubt it?" said he quite simply. "They are certainly alive. Why——"
And here he bethought himself for a moment.
"If I only had a good microscope now," said he eagerly, "I would show you the life of a plant directly—in every cell of it: did you never see the constant life in each cell—the motion of the chlorophyll granules circling and circling night and day? Did no one ever show you that?"
Well, no one had ever shown us that. We may now and again have entertained angels unawares; but we were not always stumbling against Fellows of the Royal Society.
"Then I must borrow one somewhere," said he decisively, "and show you the secret life of even the humblest plant that exists. And then look what a long life it is, in the case of the perennial plants. Did you ever think of that? Those great trees in the Yosemite valley—they were alive and feeling the warm sunlight and the winds about them when Alfred was hiding in the marshes; and they were living the same undisturbed life when Charles the First had his head chopped off; and they were living—in peace and quietness—when all Europe had to wake up to stamp out the Napoleonic pest; and they are alive now and quite careless of the little creatures that come to span out their circumference, and ticket them, and give them ridiculous names. Had any of the patriarchs a life as long as that?"
The Laird eyed this young man askance. There was something uncanny about him. What might not he say when—in the northern solitudes to which we were going—the great Semple heresy-case was brought on for discussion?
But at dinner the Laird got on very well with our new guest; for the latter listened most respectfully when Denny-mains was demonstrating the exceeding purity, and strength, and fitness of the speech used in the south of Scotland. And indeed the Laird was generous. He admitted that there were blemishes. He deprecated the introduction of French words; and gave us a much longer list of those aliens than usually appears in books. What about conjee, and que-vee, and fracaw as used by Scotch children and old wives?
Then after dinner—at nine o'clock the wonderful glow of the summer evening was still filling the drawing-room—the Laird must needs have Mary Avon sing to him. It was not a custom of hers. She rarely would sing a song of set purpose. The linnet sings all day—when you do not watch her; but she will not sing if you go and ask.
However, on this occasion, her hostess went to the piano, and sat down to play the accompaniment; and Mary Avon stood beside her and sang, in rather a low voice—but it was tender enough—some modern version of the old ballad of the Queen's Maries. What were the words? These were of them, any way:—
Yestreen the Queen had four Maries;