Ethel Morton's Enterprise Part 34

"Just in the same way that people have thoughts of their very own that you mustn't intrude on, so there are reserves in their habits that you mustn't intrude on. Every one has a right to freedom from intrusion. I insist on it for myself; my daughter never enters my bedroom without knocking. I pay her the same respect; I always tap at her door and wait for her answer before I enter."

"Would you be mad if she went into your room without knocking?"

"I should be sorry that she was so inconsiderate of my feelings. She might, perhaps, interrupt me at my toilet. I should not like that."

"Is that what I did to Miss Maria?"

"Yes, dear, it was. You don't know Miss Maria well, and yet you opened the door of her private room and went in without being invited."

"I'm sorry," she said briefly.

"I'm sure you are, now you understand why it wasn't kind."

"I wish she knew I meant to be nice."

"Would you like to have me tell her? I think she'll understand there are some things you haven't learned for you haven't a mother to teach you."

"Uncle Dan says maybe I'll have to live with the old ladies all the time, so they might as well know I wasn't trying to be mean," she whispered resignedly.

"I'll tell Miss Maria, then, and perhaps you and she will be better friends from now on because she'll know you want to please her. And now, I came over to tell you that the U.S.C. is going into New York to-day to see something of the Botanical Garden and the Arboretum. I'm going with them and they'd be glad to have you go, too."

"They won't be very glad, but I'd like to go," responded the girl, her face lighted with the nearest approach to affection Mrs. Smith ever had seen upon it.

CHAPTER XV

FUR AND FOSSILS

When the Club gathered at the station to go into town Mary was arrayed in a light blue satin dress as unsuitable for her age as it was for the time of day and the way of traveling. The other girls were dressed in blue or tan linen suits, neat and plain. Secretly Mary thought their frocks were not to be named in the same breath with hers, but once when she had said something about the simplicity of her dress to Ethel Blue, Ethel had replied that Helen had learned from her dressmaking teacher that dresses should be suited to the wearer's age and occupation, and that she thought her linen blouses and skirts were entirely suitable for a girl of fourteen who was a gardener when she wasn't in school.

This afternoon Dorothy had offered her a pongee dust coat when she stopped at the Smiths' on her way to the cars.

"Aren't you afraid you'll get that pretty silk all cindery?" she asked.

Mary realized that Dorothy thought her not appropriately dressed for traveling, but she tossed her head and said, "O, I like to wear something good looking when I go into New York."

One of the purposes of the expedition was to see at the Museum of Natural History some of the fossil leaves and plants about which the Mortons had heard from Lieutenant and Captain Morton who had found several of them themselves in the course of their travels.

At the Museum they gathered around the stones and examined them with the greatest interest. There were some sh.e.l.ls, apparently as perfect as when they were turned into stone, and others represented only by the moulds they had left when they crumbled away. There were ferns, the delicate fronds showing the veining that strengthened the leaflets when they danced in the breeze of some prehistoric morning.

"It's wonderful!" exclaimed the Ethels, and Mary asked, "What happened to it?"

"I thought some one would ask that," replied Mrs. Smith, "so I brought these verses by Mary Branch to read to you while we stood around one of these ancient rocks."

THE PETRIFIED FERN

"In a valley, centuries ago Grew a little fern-leaf, green and slender, Veining delicate and fibers tender; Waving when the wind crept down so low.

Rushes tall and moss and gra.s.s grew round it, Playful sunbeams darted in and found it, Drops of dew stole in by night and crowned it, But no foot of man e'er trod that way; Earth was young and keeping holiday.

"Monster fishes swam the silent main; Stately forests waved their giant branches, Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain; Nature revelled in grand mysteries, But the little fern was not of these, Did not number with the hills and trees; Only grew and waved its wild sweet way, No one came to note it day by day.

"Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood, Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean; Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay,-- Covered it and hid it safe away.

O, the long, long centuries since that day!

O, the changes! O, life's bitter cost, Since that useless little fern was lost!

"Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man Searching Nature's secrets, far and deep; From a fissure in a rocky steep He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, Veinings, leaf.a.ge, fibers clear and fine, And the fern's life lay in every line!

So, I think, G.o.d hides some souls away, Sweetly to surprise us, the last day."

From the Museum the party went to the Bronx where they first took a long walk through the Zoo. How Mary wished that she did not have on a pale blue silk dress and high heeled shoes as she dragged her tired feet over the gravel paths and stood watching Gunda, the elephant, "weaving" back and forth on his chain, and the tigers and leopards keeping up their restless pacing up and down their cages, and the monkeys, chattering hideously and s.n.a.t.c.hing through the bars at any s.h.i.+ning object worn by their visitors! It was only because she stepped back nimbly that she did not lose a locket that attracted the attention of an ugly imitation of a human being.

The herds of large animals pleased them all.

"How kind it is of the keepers to give these creatures companions and the same sort of place to live in that they are accustomed to,"

commented Ethel Brown.

"Did you know that this is one of the largest herds of buffalo in the United States?" asked Tom, who, with Della, had joined them at the Museum. "Father says that when he was young there used to be plenty of buffalo on the western plains. The horse-car drivers used to wear coats of buffalo skin and every new England farmer had a buffalo robe. It was the cheapest fur in use. Then the railroads went over the plains and there was such a destruction of the big beasts that they were practically exterminated. They are carefully preserved now."

"The prairie dogs always amuse me," said Mrs. Smith. "Look at that fellow! Every other one is eating his dinner as fast as he can but this one is digging with his front paws and kicking the earth away with his hind paws with amazing industry."

"He must be a convict at hard labor," guessed Roger.

"Or the Mayor of the Prairie Dog Town setting an example to his const.i.tuents," laughed James.

The polar bear was suffering from the heat and nothing but the tip of his nose and his eyes were to be seen above the water of his tank where he floated luxuriously in company with two cakes of ice.

The wolves and the foxes had dens among rocks and the wild goats stood daintily on pinnacles to see what was going on at a distance. No one cared much for the reptiles, but the high flying cage for birds kept them beside it for a long time.

Across the road they entered the grounds of the Arboretum and pa.s.sed along a narrow path beside a noisy brook under heavy trees, until they came to a grove of tall hemlocks. With upturned heads they admired these giants of the forest and then pa.s.sed on to view other trees from many climes and countries.

"Here's the Lumholtz pine that father wrote me about from Mexico," cried Ethel Blue, whose father, Captain Morton, had been with General Funston at Vera Cruz. "See, the needles hang down like a spray, just as he said.

You know the wood has a peculiar resonance and the Mexicans make musical instruments of it."

"It's a graceful pine," approved Ethel Brown. "What a lot of pines there are."

"We are so accustomed about here to white pines that the other kinds seem strange, but in the South there are several kinds," contributed Dorothy. "The needles of the long leaf pine are a foot long and much coa.r.s.er than these white pine needles. Don't you remember, I made some baskets out of them?"

The Ethels did remember.

"Their green is yellower. The tree is full of resin and it makes the finest kind of kindling."

"Is that what the negroes call 'light wood'?" asked Della.

"Yes, that's light wood. In the fields that haven't been cultivated for a long time there spring up what they call in the South 'old field pines' or 'loblolly pines.' They have coa.r.s.e yellow green needles, too, but they aren't as long as the others. There are three needles in the bunch."

"Don't all the pines have three needles in the bunch?" asked Margaret.