?" he asked.

"Sensitive plants. And when I came they all lowered their branches to
their sides like--well, slowly, like this--"

She held her right arm out straight and lowered it slowly and steadily
to her side. And a most graceful and shapely arm it was.

"I would n't have been so much surprised," she continued, "to just see
leaves fold together, like clover. You know clover leaves all shut up
at night and go to sleep. But these plants were quite large and they
actually _moved_. And of course the leaves shut together, too; they
were long like little tender locust leaves, and each one folded itself
right in the middle."

She placed her hands edge to edge and closed them together to show him.

"But, you know, while they were doing that, they were folding back
against their long stems, and the stems were folding back against the
branches, and the straight branches were all folding downwards against
the main stalk. What I mean is that everything worked together, like
this--"

Janet extended both arms with her fingers widely spread; then, as her
arms gradually lowered, her fingers closed together.

"It was something like that," she added, "but not exactly; it was ten
times as much--something like the ribs of an umbrella going down all
around, with stems and rows of locust leaves all along them closing
together. And every little leaf was like a rabbit laying back its
ears."

"Yes; I know what you mean," said Steve. "They are a kind of mimosa.
Some people call them that."

"Well," said Janet, "I sat and watched one. I just touched it with a
hatpin and it did that. A person would almost think it had
intelligence. And after a while--when it thought I was gone, I
suppose--it began to open its leaves and stems and put its arms out
again."

She raised her arms slowly, spreading her fingers. Steve was a most
attentive listener and spectator. He rather wished there were other
plants to imitate.

"But that wasn't really what I started to tell about," she went on.
"As I was walking along I came to a--well, you might say a whole
_crowd_ of them. There was quite a growth like a patch of ferns. I
had n't got to them yet, or even taken particular notice of them,--I
must have been ten or twelve feet away,--when they all began to close
up. I stopped perfectly still; and pretty soon the green leaves were
gone and the place was all changed. Now, how do you suppose those
plants ever _knew_ I was coming? I wou