"_Oh_! Then you _have_ studied botany! But they did not teach you there to spot _Thlaspi arvense_?" "No; I taught myself that before I began to study botany. I think it is a pity that that part of the subject is so much ignored." "But botany, as taught at present, is much more scientific. Old-fashioned botany--especially as taught to ladies--was a happy combination of pedestrianism and glorified stamp-collecting." "True," said Mona, "and if one had to choose between the old and the new, one would choose the new without a moment's hesitation; but, on the other hand, it does give the enemy occasion to blaspheme, when a man can tell them that a flower is composite, proterandrous, syngenesious, &c., but when he is quite unable to designate it by its simple name of dandelion." Both the men laughed. When they reached Kilwinnie, the elder of the two stopped and held out his hand. "I am sorry we cannot offer to see you home," he said; "but the fact is, dinner is waiting for me now at the inn, and I start for London to-night. If you are ever in town again, my wife and I will be only too pleased to see you," and he handed her his card. He did not ask her name, for the simple reason that he had already seen it in the beginning of her _Flora_. When Mona looked at the card, she found that she had been spending the afternoon with a scientist of European celebrity. "If redbeard be that," she said, "what must blackbeard be, and why did he not give me his card too?" She walked on at a good pace, realising only when she saw the lights of Kirkstoun, how dark it had grown. As she passed the post-office, she saw a knot of men assembled at the counter; for, in an unobtrusive way, the Kirkstoun post-office--which was also a flourishing grocer's shop--served many of the purposes of a club. This it did the more effectually as the only female assistant was a wrinkled and spiteful old woman, whose virgin ears could not be injured by any ordinary masculine gossip. Scarcely had Mona left this rendezvous behind her when she was overtaken by Dr Dudley. "You are very late," he said simply. "Yes, but I have had a glorious time." "You are tired?" "Healthily tired." "Cobwebs all gone?" "Oh yes! In fact, they had begun to go when I saw you yesterday, or I could not have spoken of them." "Poor little soul!" he thought to himself, wondering how she escaped melancholia in the narrow limits of her life. "You did not really mind those vulgar girls yesterday," he went on awkwardly, after a pause. For a moment she could not think what he was referring to. "Oh no!" she said at last, with wide-open eyes of wonder. "How could I? They don't come into my world at all. Neither their opinion of me, nor their want of manners, can possibly affect me." "That is certainly the sensible way to look at it."