“Well, you needn’t laugh at a feller. You didn’t know what a wombat was when I asked you, and I didn’t roar,” said Ben, giving his hat a slap, as nothing else was handy.

“The idea of wanting an anaconda tickled me so, I couldn’t help it.  I dare say you’d have got me one if I had asked for it, you are such an obliging chap.”

“Of course I would if I could.  Shouldn’t be surprised if you did some day, you want such funny things,” answered Ben, appeased by the compliment.

“I’ll try the amanuensis first.  It’s only some one to write for me; I get so tired doing it without a table.  You write well enough, and it will be good for you to know something about botany.  I intend to teach you, Ben,” said Thorny, as if conferring a great favor.

“It looks pretty hard,” muttered Ben, with a doleful glance at the book laid open upon a strew of torn leaves and flowers.

“No, it isn’t; it’s regularly jolly, and you’d be no end of a help if you only knew a little.  Now suppose I say, ’Bring me a “ranunculus bulbosus,"’ how would you know what I wanted?” demanded Thorny, waving his microscope with a learned air.

“Shouldn’t.”

“There are quantities of them all round us, and I want to analyze one.  See if you can’t guess.”

Ben stared vaguely from earth to sky, and was about to give it up, when a buttercup fell at his feet, and he caught sight of Miss Celia smiling at him from behind her brother, who did not see the flower.

“S’pose you mean this? I don’t call ’em rhinocerus bulburses, so I wasn’t sure.”  And taking the hint as quickly as it was given, Ben presented the buttercup as if he knew all about it.

“You guessed that remarkably well.  Now bring me a ’leontodon taraxacum,’” said Thorny, charmed with the quickness of his pupil and glad to display his learning.

Again Ben gazed, but the field was full of early flowers, and if a long pencil had not pointed to a dandelion close by he would have been lost.

“Here you are, sir,” he answered with a chuckle, and Thorny took his turn at being astonished now.

“How the dickens did you know that?”

“Try it again, and may be you’ll find out,” laughed Ben.

Diving hap-hazard into his book, Thorny demanded a “trifolium pratense.”

The clever pencil pointed, and Ben brought a red clover, mightily enjoying the joke, and thinking that this kind of botany wasn’t bad fun.

“Look here, no fooling!” and Thorny sat up to investigate the matter, so quickly that his sister had not time to sober down.  “Ah, I’ve caught you!  Not fair to tell, Celia.  Now, Ben, you’ve got to learn all about this buttercup, to pay for cheating.”

“Werry good, sir; bring on your rhinoceriouses,” answered Ben, who couldn’t help imitating his old friend the clown when he felt particularly jolly.

“Sit there and write what I tell you,” ordered Thorny, with all the severity of a strict schoolmaster.