very gravely:--

"We cannot keep dead things warm, daughter. When animal heat goes, life
goes."

"And when animal heat comes, does life come?" I queried. "Is that what
makes things alive?"

"Yes, dear. I have not time to explain it to you now. I am very busy.
Some other time we will talk more about it."

I carried a spandy new idea, and a stirring, into the garden with me at
noon, as a chicken runs away to a corner with a crumb. The sun shone
brightly, and I easily kept comfortable by skipping up and down a long
walk, bordered on the northern side by an arbor-vitae hedge. I did not
know that resinous evergreens really give out warmth, but I had found
out, for myself, that this was the warmest nook of the grounds in
winter, and haunted it exceedingly.

"When animal heat comes, life comes," I repeated aloud, in dancing
along.

The sentence sounded important, and pleased my ears. Presently, I would
set about getting all the meaning I could extract from it, and
experiment upon my acquisition. All my mental currency went into active
circulation.

An odd-looking thing lay in the middle of the path, that was not there
when I came down awhile ago. I thought, at the first glance, that it was
a hedgehog. I had seen pictures of the animal, and knew that when hunted
so closely that it cannot escape it rolls itself into a prickly ball.
This queer object was an oblong roll, about six inches in length and two
inches thick, and covered with very coarse brown fur or wool. I picked
it up. It was very cold. Then it could not be alive. It was light as a
puffball. Then it was empty. For the rest it was a puzzle. I ran with it
to Mam' Chloe, who was getting Bud to sleep in my mother's chamber.

She cast a look at my "find," and sniffed impatiently.

"Always huntin' and foolin' long some trash or nuther! Fetchin' er ole
dade sunflower in ter show me when I'm doin' my bes' ter git this
blessed sugar-plum pie to sleep so's I ken git to my mendin'. Go 'long,
Miss Molly!"

I was used to her moods, clement and adverse, and I stood my ground.

"Are you _sure_ it's a sunflower, mammy?"

"What you take me fur, chile? Don' I know a sunflower that's run ter
seed las' summer, an' is empty an' dade as Furious [Pharaoh] now? I got
no time to steddy 'bout sech foolishness."

I walked off,--not crestfallen, but blithe. One word had shunted my
ideas upon a new track. She called this nondescript--which might, or
might not, be the dried and w