“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 shells, 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 grass 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.