the usual answer. "But suppose," he continued artfully, "somebody sent
you anonymously some flowers."

"Her ho!" suggested Johnny Filgee hoarsely, with bold bad recklessness.
Ignoring the remark and the kick with which Rupert had resented it on
the person of his brother, the master continued:

"And if you couldn't find out who sent them, you would want at least to
know what they were and where they grew."

"Ef they grew anywhere 'bout yer we could tell her that," said a chorus
of small voices.

The master hesitated. He was conscious of being on delicate ground. He
was surrounded by a dozen pairs of little keen eyes from whom Nature had
never yet succeeded in hiding her secrets--eyes that had waited for
and knew the coming up of the earliest flowers; little fingers that had
never turned the pages of a text-book, but knew where to scrape away the
dead leaves above the first anemone, or had groped painfully among the
lifeless branches in forgotten hollows for the shy dog-rose; unguided
little feet that had instinctively made their way to remote southern
slopes for the first mariposas, or had unerringly threaded the
tule-hidden banks of the river for flower-de-luce. Convinced that he
could not hold his own on their level, he shamelessly struck at once
above it.

"Suppose that one of those flowers," he continued, "was not like the
rest; that its stalks and leaves, instead of being green and soft, were
white and stringy like flannel as if to protect it from cold, wouldn't
it be nice to be able to say at once that it had lived only in the snow,