g Miss Francis.

_28._ It was practically impossible to discover any one person among so
many scattered and disorganized people, but chance aided my native
intelligence and perseverance. Only the day before she had been involved
with an indignant group of the homeless who attributed their misfortunes
to her and overcoming their natural American chivalry toward the weaker
sex had tried to revenge themselves. I was therefore able to locate her,
not ten miles from the temporary headquarters of the _Daily
Intelligencer_.

Her laboratory was an abandoned chickenhouse which must have reminded
her constantly of her lost kitchen. She looked almost jaunty as she
greeted me, a cobweb from the roof of the decaying shed caught in her
hair. "I have no profitable secrets to market, Weener--youre wasting
your time with me."

"I am not here as a salesman, Miss Francis," I said. "The _Daily
Intelligencer_ would like to tell its readers how you are getting on
with your search for some cure for the grass."

"You talk as if _Cynodon dactylon_ were a disease. There is no cure for
life but death."

Since she was going to be so touchy about the grass--as if it were a
personal possession--(why, I thought, it's as much mine as hers)--I
substituted a more diplomatic form of words.

"Well, I have made an interesting discovery," she conceded grudgingly
and pointed to a row of flowerpots, her eyes lighting as she scanned the
single blades of grass perhaps an inch and a half high growing in each.
The sight meant nothing to me and she must have gathered as much from my
expression.

"_Cynodon dactylon_," she explained, "germinated from seeds borne by the
inoculated plant. Obviously the omnivorous capacity has not been
transmitted to offspring."

This was probably fascinating to her or a gardener or botanist, but I
couldnt see how it concerned me or the _Daily Intelligencer_.

"It could be a vitamin deficiency," she muttered incomprehensibly, "or
evasion of the laws regarding compulsory education. These plants
indicate the affected grass may propagate its abnormal condition only
through the extension of the already changed stolons or rhizomes. It
means that only the parent, which is presumably not immortal, is
aberrant. The offspring is no different from the weed householders have
been cursing ever since the Mission Fathers enslaved the Digger
Indians."

"Why, then," I exclaimed, suddenly enlightened, "all we have to do is
wait until th