of this handsome and intelligent Club know what leaves
are for?" she inquired.

"As representing in a high degree both the qualities you mention, Madam
President," returned Tom, with a bow, "I take upon myself the duty of
replying that perhaps you and Roger do because you've studied botany,
and maybe Margaret and James do because they've had a garden, and it's
possible that the Ethels and Dorothy do inasmuch as they've had the
great benefit of your acquaintance, but that Della and I don't know the
very first thing about leaves except that spinach and lettuce are good
to eat."

"Take a good, full breath after that long sentence," advised James. "Go
ahead, Helen. I don't know much about leaves except to recognize them
when I see them."

"Do you know what they're for?" demanded Helen, once again.

"I can guess," answered Margaret. "Doesn't the plant breathe and eat
through them?"

"It does exactly that. It takes up food from water and from the soil by
its roots and it gets food and water from the air by its leaves."

"Sort of a slender diet," remarked Roger, who was blessed with a hearty
appetite.

"The leaves give it a lot of food. I was reading in a book on botany the
other day that the elm tree in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under which
Washington reviewed his army during the Revolution was calculated to
have about seven million leaves and that they gave it a surface of about
five acres. That's quite a surface to eat with!"

"Some mouth!" commented Roger.

"If each one of you will pick a leaf you'll have in your hand an
illustration of what I say," suggested Helen.

[Illustration: Lily of the Valley Leaf]

They all provided themselves with leaves, picking them from the plants
and shrubs and trees around them, except Ethel Blue, who already had a
lily of the valley leaf with some flowers pinned to her blouse.

"When a leaf has everything that belongs to it it has a little stalk of
its own that is called a _petiole_; and at the foot of the petiole it
has two tiny leaflets called _stipules_, and it has what we usually
speak of as 'the leaf' which is really the _blade_."

They all noted these parts either on their own leaves or their
neighbors', for some of their specimens came from plants that had
transformed their parts.

"What is the blade of your leaf made of?" Helen asked Ethel Brown.

"Green stuff with a sort of framework inside," answered Ethel,
scrutinizing the specimen in her hand.

"What are the