“Yes, indeed!” said Clara.  “Don’t you remember, Miss Harson, that sometimes Edith and I can have only one pear divided between us at dessert because they are so large?”

“Yes, dear; and I think that half a duchess pear is as much as can be comfortably managed at once.”

“Well,” observed Malcolm, “I don’t want half an apple.—­But, Miss Harson, do they ever have ‘pear-howlings’ in England?”

“I have never read of any,” was the reply, “and I think that strange custom is confined to apple trees.  And there is no mention made of either pears or pear trees in the Scriptures.”

“What are prickly-pears?” asked Clara.  “Do they have thorns on ’em?”

“There is a plant by this name,” replied her governess, “with large yellow flowers, and the fruit is full of small seeds and has a crimson pulp.  It grows in sandy places near the salt water; it is abundant in North Africa and Syria, and is considered quite good to eat; but neither plant nor fruit bears any resemblance to our pear trees:  it is a cactus.”

“Won’t you have a story for us this evening, Miss Harson?” asked Edith, rather wistfully.

“Perhaps so, dear—­I have been thinking of it—­but it will not be about pear trees.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” with a very bright face; “I’d as soon have it about cherry trees, or—­’Most anything!”

Miss Harson laughed, and said,

“Well, then, I think it will be about cherries; so you must rest on that.  This morning we will go around among the fruit trees and see what we can learn from seeing them.”

Of course it was Saturday morning and there were no lessons, or they would not have been roaming around “promiscuous,” as Jane called it; for the young governess was very careful not to let the getting of one kind of knowledge interfere with the getting of another.

“How do you like these pretty quince trees?” asked Miss Harson as they came to some large bushes with great pinkish flowers.

“I like ’em,” replied Edith, “because they’re so little.  And oh what pretty flowers!”

“Some more relations of the rose,” said her governess.  “And do you notice how fragrant they are?  The tree is always low and crooked, just as you see it, and the branches straggle not very gracefully.  The under part of the dark-green leaves is whitish and downy-looking, and the flowers are handsome enough to warrant the cultivation of the tree just for their sake, but the large golden fruit is much prized for preserves, and in the autumn a small tree laden down with it is quite an ornamental object.  The quince is more like a pear than an apple.  As the book says, ’it has the same tender and mucilaginous core; the seeds are not enclosed in a dry hull, like those of the apple; and the pulp of the quince, like that of the pear, is granulated, while that of the apple displays in its texture a firmer and finer organization.’  The fruit, however, is so hard, even when ripe, that it cannot be eaten without cooking.  It is said to be a native of hedges and rocky places in the South of Europe.”