"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the major, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure, and he seemed sufficiently animated to set a stranger wondering at an old soldier taking up with enthusiasm so strange a pursuit as that in which he engaged. "There, you don't know, my dear, but I applaud your brave effort to remember. Someone here would not even try." "No, uncle, it is of no use," said Glynne, quietly, though she evidently took an interest in her companion's enthusiastic ways. "I do know," said Lucy, "and I won't be told." "You don't," said the major, banteringly. "I do," cried Lucy. "Yes, I have it. It's an _Amanita_." "Bravo!" "_Amanita Rubescens_," cried Lucy triumphantly; "and if you break it the flesh turns red--there!" "And she has broken the mushroom in half, and it has not turned red," said the major, "because she is wrong." "Oh, Major Day!" cried Lucy, "don't say that. I am right, am I not?" "No, my dear, not quite," said the major, "but very nearly. That is _Amanita Pantkerinus_, a very near relative of the one I showed you yesterday." "But I have been trying," cried Lucy. "I know you have," said the major, smiling, "and I'm sure you can tell me what these are," he continued, pointing to a cluster of flat, greeny-grey buttons, with dimly marked orange rings upon their surface. "Oh yes, I know them," cried Lucy, eagerly picking two or three from the patch of grass in an opening amongst the Scotch firs. "_Agaricus Deliciosus_; and, oh, it is getting so late. I must make haste back. I can run home now. Good-bye, Glynne; good-bye, Major Day." "Good-bye, little pupil," he replied, "and you shall have your marks although you were not right." "We'll stop and watch you till you are safely home," said Glynne. "Good-bye--good-bye." Volume 1, Chapter V. VIRGO ASLEEP. Glynne Day stood with her uncle at the edge of the dark wood, where the slippery fir-needles lay thickly, and kept every blade of verdure from thrusting forth a relief to the dull, neutral grey that carpeted the ground, amid the tall, bronze-red columns. They gazed down a steep slope, and over the wild heathery waste that lay between them and what looked like a little wooded islet, rising out of the common into quite a mamelon, almost precipitous of side, and crowned with a heavy-looking edifice of brick, with other structures attached, all solid, plain, and terribly out of character with the wild landscape. For, from where they stood, as it were on the very verge of the cultivated land, there was a stretch of miles upon miles of rolling surface, here sand, there bog, the one brown and purple with the heather or yellow with the gorse, the other in little patches of vivid green or creamy pink, where the _sphagnum_ grew, and the cotton rushes had their home. "What a desolate looking spot it is," said the major thoughtfully, as they watched the active little figure tripping along the sandy road; "and yet it has its beauties after all."