ordinary looking plant!

"Oh!" sighed Madaline, betraying her chagrin. "Only a flower!"

"That's all," admitted Mary, "but I don't believe you ever saw just
this kind," and her voice was as soft and crooning as if she had been
petting a real baby.

Cleo and Grace exchanged significant glances. Was the girl queer after
all? they were asking.

The little plant looked like nothing more than the ordinary
Jack-in-the-Pulpit, but Mary's tenderness in handling the beautifully
wrought brass jar, in which the plant was growing, betokened something
much more precious than our wood friend Jack.

"He's hungry," went on the child, and at this Grace burst into
laughter. Cleo was tittering, and Madaline all but pouting her
disappointment.

"I know what you think," Mary said with a good natured smile, "but this
little flower really eats--and for his breakfast I must find a fly or
spider."

"Oh mercy!" shrieked Grace. "Mary, what are you talking about?"

"Well, you just wait and see. There, catch that little fly or just
shoo it over this way."

Becoming serious now, serious enough to see the fun out at any rate,
the girls waved hands and handkerchiefs around some perfectly innocent
little flies, and presently they made for the plant which Mary had
again deposited on the window box. For a minute or two the insects
buzzed around, then made for the flower of the plant.

"Mercy!" screamed Grace.

"Land sakes!" added Cleo.

"Oh!" ejaculated Madaline.

But the little fly was gone. The plant had actually eaten it up!
Swallowed it whole!

The girls looked at Mary now, as if she were almost uncannily wise, or
in some way magical. She expected their attitude, evidently, for her
own low musical laugh followed.

"I know you think it is very queer, girls," she explained, "but in the
country I come from this is a common plant. Grandie calls it by a long
name, but most people call it the Pitcher Plant. You see, it is filled
with something that attracts insects, and when they go in for the
nectar they can't get out. This kind is rare, and I have watched it
lest Janos would get it. In New York he could sell it and I know he
would have taken it, but I have kept it hidden for a long time. See
how pretty its colors are, and how wonderfully it is shaped and formed?"

"Oh, I remember now," said Cleo. "I have heard Daddy talk of such
plants, but of course I never saw one. It is something of an orchid,
isn't it?"

All t