is so little good caricature."

"Isn't your idea of painting rather anatomical?" Philip ventured to ask.

"Do you think that if Raphael had known nothing of anatomy the world
would have accepted his Sistine Madonna for the woman she is?" was the
retort.

"I see it is interesting," said Philip, shifting his ground again, "but
what is the real good of all these botanical names and classifications?"

Miss McDonald gave a weary sigh. "Well, you must put things in order.
You studied philology in Germany? The chief end of that is to trace the
development, migration, civilization of the human race. To trace the
distribution of plants is another way to find out about the race. But
let that go. Don't you think that I get more pleasure in looking at all
the growing things we see, as we sit here, than you do in seeing them
and knowing as little about them as you pretend to?"

Philip said that he could not analyze the degree of pleasure in
such things, but he seemed to take his ignorance very lightly. What
interested him in all this talk was that, in discovering the mind of the
governess, he was getting nearer to the mind of her pupil. And finally
he asked (and Miss McDonald smiled, for she knew what this conversation,
like all others with him, must ultimately come to):

"Does the Mavick family also take to botany?"

"Oh yes. Mrs. Mavick is intimate with all the florists in New York. And
Miss Evelyn, when I take home these specimens, will analyze them and
tell all about them. She is very sharp about such things. You must have
noticed that she likes to be accurate?"

"But she is fond of poetry."

"Yes, of poetry that she understands. She has not much of the emotional
vagueness of many young girls."

All this was very delightful for Philip, and for a long time, on one
pretext or another, he kept the conversation revolving about this point.
He fancied he was very deep in doing this. To his interlocutor he was,
however, very transparent. And the young man would have been surprised
and flattered if he had known how much her indulgence of him in this
talk was due to her genuine liking for him.

When they returned to the inn, Mrs. Mavick began to rally Philip about
his feminine taste in woodsy things. He would gladly have thrown botany
or anything else overboard to win the good opinion of Evelyn's mother,
but botany now had a real significance and a new meaning for him.
Therefore he put in a defense, by saying:

"Botany, in