The minister was busy
with his sermon.
"If you don't remember," he said impatiently, "I will never tell you
the name of another flower." The boy went away, his eyes wide with
terror at the threat; but after that he did not forget a single
name.
When he was big enough, they sent him to the Latin school at Wexioe,
where the other boys nicknamed him "the little botanist." His
thoughts were outdoors when they should have been in the dry books,
and his teachers set him down as a dunce. They did not know that his
real study days were when, in vacation, he tramped the thirty miles
to his home. Every flower and every tree along the way was an old
friend, and he was glad to see them again. Once in a while he found
a book that told of plants, and then he was anything but a dunce.
But when his father, after Carl had been eight years in the school,
asked his teachers what they thought of him, they told him
flatly that he might make a good tailor or shoemaker, but a
minister--never; he was too stupid.
That was a blow, for the parson of Stenbrohult and his wife had set
their hearts on making a minister of Carl, and small wonder. His
mother was born in the parsonage, and her father and grandfather had
been shepherds of the parish all their lives.
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