were not ashamed of making a pun, or, as we say in academic
circles, being guilty of antanaclasis, I would say that you are
in-corri-gible."

Coristine laughed, and then remarked seriously, "Here am I, with a
strap-press full of printing paper in my knapsack, and paying no
attention to science at all. We must begin to take life in airnest now,
Wilks, my boy, and keep our eyes skinned for specimens. Sorry I am I
didn't call and pay my respects to my botanical friend at the Barrie
High School. He could have given us a pointer or two about the flowers
that grow round here."

"Flowers are scarce in July," said the schoolmaster, "they seem to take
a rest in the hot weather. The spring is their best time. Of course you
know that song about the flowers in spring?"

"Never heard it in my life; sing it to us, Farquhar, like a darlin'."

Now, the dominie was not given to singing, but thus adjured, and the
road being clear, he sang in a very fair voice:--

We are the flowers,
The fair young flowers
That come with the voice of Spring,
Tra la la, la la la, la la,
Tra la, tra la a a a.

Coristine revelled in the chorus, which, at the "a a a," went up to the
extreme higher compass of the human voice and beyond it. He made his
friend repeat the performance, called him a daisy, and tra la la'd to
his heart's content. Then he sat down on a grassy bank by the wayside
and laughed loud and long. "Oh, it's a nice pair of fair young flowers
we are, coming with the voice of spring; but we're not hayseeds,
anyway." When the lawyer turned himself round to rise, Wilkinson asked
seriously, "Did you hurt yourself then, Corry?"

"Never a bit, except that I'm weak with the laughing; and for why?"

"Because there is some red on your trousers, and I thought it might be
blood--that you had sat down on some sharp thing."

"It'll be strawberry blite, I'll wager, _Blitum capitatum_, and a fine
thing it is. Mrs. Marsh, that keeps our boarding house, has a garden
where it grows wild in among the peas. She wanted some colouring for the
icing of a cake, and hadn't a bit of cochineal or anything of the kind
in the house. She was telling me her trouble, for it was a holiday and
the shops were shut, and she's always that friendly with me; when, says
I, 'There is no trouble about that.' So I went to the garden and got two
lovely stalks of _Blitum capitatum_. 'Is it poison?' said she. 'Poison!'
sai