Lady Mabel told him that
she had heard that _poeta nascitur_, and now she believed it from
analogy; for he was certainly born a botanist. He rebutted the sarcasm
by showing that he had the terms stamen, pistil, calix, corolla,
capsule, and a host of others at the tip of his tongue; though
possibly, had he been called upon to apply each in its proper place,
he would have been like a certain student of geometry we once knew,
who, by aid of a good memory alone, could demonstrate all Euclid's
theorems, without understanding one of them, provided the diagrams
were small enough to be hidden by his hand, so you could not detect
him in pointing to the wrong angle and line.
January was gone, and the earlier of the two springs that mark this
climate was opening beautifully. L'Isle displayed temptingly before
Lady Mabel's eyes the wild flowers he had collected during a laborious
morning spent on hill and plain, in wood and field, and urged her to
lose no time in taking the field too, and making collections for the
_hortus siccus_ of which she talked so much, but toward which she had
yet done nothing; while at the same time, she might, without trouble,
indoctrinate him in the mysteries of this beautiful branch of natural
history.
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