ng it. But then I
suppose Terrestrial birds are quite different from ours? More
housebroken, shall we say?"

"Everything's different," James said and, for an irrational moment, he
hated everything that was blue that should have been green, everything
sweet that should have been vicious, everything intelligent that should
have been mindless.

* * * * *

Since matters could not grow much worse, they improved to a degree.
After a day or two had passed, Phyllis, being a conscientious girl, came
to realize how wrong it had been for her as a Terrestrial immigrant to
show overt hostility toward a native of the planet that had welcomed
her.

"But how can she be a--a person?" Phyllis wanted to know, when they were
inside the cottage, for she had learned to hold her tongue when they
were near Magnolia or any of her sisters, who, though they could not
speak the language as fluently as she, understood it very well and
eavesdropped at every possible opportunity in order, they said, to
improve their accents. "She's a tree. A plant. And plants are just
vegetables." She stabbed her needle energetically through the tablecloth
she was embroidering.

"You mustn't project Terrestrial attitudes upon Elysian ones," James
said, patiently looking up from his book. "And don't underestimate
Magnolia's capabilities. She has sense organs, and motor organs, too.
She can't move from where she is, because she's rooted to the ground,
but she's capable of turgor movements, like certain Terrestrial forms of
vegetation--for example, the sensitive plant or blue grass."

"Blue grass," Phyllis exclaimed. "I'm sick of blue grass. I want green
grass."

"However, these trees have conscious control of their _pulvini_, whereas
the Earth's plants don't, and so they can do a lot of things that Earth
plants can't."

"It sounds like a dirty word to me."

"_Pulvini_ merely means motor organs."

"Oh."

* * * * *

He closed his book, which was a more advanced botany text, covered with
the jacket of a French novel in order to spare Phyllis's feelings.
"Darling, can't you get it through your pretty head that they're
intelligent life-forms? If it'll make it easier for you to think of them
as human beings who happen to look like trees, then do that."

"That's exactly what I _am_ doing. And I'm quite sure she thinks of you
as a tree who happens to look like a human being."

"Phyllis, sometimes