looking for, isn't it?" she said, half timidly.

"It is," responded Low, in gratified surprise; "but how did you know
it? You're not a botanist, are you?"

"I reckon not," said Teresa; "but you picked some when we came, and I
noticed what they were."

Here was indeed another revelation. Low stopped and gazed at her with
such frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black eyes fell
before him.

"And do you think," he asked with logical deliberation, "that you could
find any plant from another I should give you?"

"Yes."

"Or from a drawing of it?"

"Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me."

A half-confidential, half fraternal silence followed.

"I tell you what. I've got a book"--

"I know it," interrupted Teresa; "full of these things."

"Yes. Do you think you could"--

"Of course I could," broke in Teresa, again.

"But you don't know what I mean," said the imperturbable Low.

"Certainly I do. Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different ones for
you to write under--that's it, isn't it?"

Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she had
fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.

"I suppose," said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which it
would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they were
treading--"I suppose that _she_ places great value on them?"

Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at all
impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also. He
said "Yes;" but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of
San Francisco, that "_they_ were rather particular about the rarer
kinds."

Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations with
some favored _one_ of her sex, this frank confession of a plural
devotion staggered her.

"They?" she repeated.

"Yes," he continued calmly. "The Botanical Society I correspond with
are more particular than the Government Survey."

"Then you are doing this for a society?" demanded Teresa, with a stare.

"Certainly. I'm making a collection and classification of specimens. I
intend--but what are you looking at?"

Teresa had suddenly turned away. Putting his hand lightly on her
shoulder, the young man brought her face to face with him again. She
was laughing.

"I thought all the while it was for a girl," she said; "and"--But here
the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible and genuine
outburst of laughter. It was the first