en Mrs. Danby and the poetic Amanda
smiled.

"Oh!" said Charity, at last, with an air of great relief. "I see it now.
How funny! I never thought of it before; but the clover-blossom isn't
_one_ flower at all--it's a good many flowers!"

"Ho! ho!" cried Daniel David. "That's a good one! You can't get out of
it in that way, my lady. Can she, Ma?"

Ma didn't know. None of the rest knew; but they all crowded about
Charity, while, with trembling fingers, she carefully pulled the blossom
to pieces, and discovered that every piece was a flower. "See!" she
exclaimed, eagerly. "Dozens of them, and every single one
complete,--pistil and stamens and all! Oh, my! Isn't it wonderful?"

"I surrender," said Daniel David.

"But you've helped me to find out something that I didn't know before,"
said the enthusiastic sister, forgiving in an instant all his past
taunting. "I wonder if Dorothy knows it. Let's go right over and ask
her."

"Agreed," said Daniel David. "Wait till I dress up a bit." Off he ran,
whistling, and in fifteen minutes he and Charity were with Dorry in the
Reed sitting-room, examining the separated, tiny clover-flowers through
Donald's microscope.

Dorothy explained to them that the clover-blossom or head is a compound
flower, because a head is made up of many flowerets, each complete in
itself.

But when she went further, and told them that not only the clover, but
every dandelion and daisy in the field is made up of many flowers, even
Charity appeared incredulous, saying: "What! Do you mean to say that the
daisy, with its yellow centre and lovely white petals, is not a flower?"

"No, I don't mean that," said Dorry. "Of course, the daisy is a flower.
But it is a compound flower. What you call white petals are not exactly
petals. Anyhow, the yellow centre is made up of hundreds of very small
flowers. That's what I mean. I have seen them magnified, and they look
like yellow lilies."

Daniel David hardly dared to say "prove it" to so elegant a creature as
Dorry, but his countenance was so expressive of doubt that the president
of the G. B. C. at once proposed that he should go and gather a
dandelion and a daisy, for them to pull to pieces and then examine the
parts under the microscope.

All of which would have come to pass had not Donald rushed into the
house at that moment, calling:

"Dorry! Dorry! Come up on the hill! We're going to set up the targets."

CHAPTER XX.

THE SHOOTING-MATCH.