Professor Jonkins Cannibal Plant | Page 2

jokes were not relished, Adams assumed an
interest he did not feel, and listened to a long dissertation on botany in
general and carnivorous plants in particular. He would much rather
have been eating some of the queer hybrid fruits the professor raised.
He pleaded an engagement when he saw an opening in the talk, and
went away.
It was some months after that before he saw the professor again. The
botanist was busy in his conservatory in the meantime, and the
gardener he hired to do rough work noticed that his master spent much
time in that part of the glass house where the pitcher plant was
growing.
For Professor Jonkin had become so much interested in his latest
acquisition that he seemed to think of nothing else. His plan for
increasing strawberries to the size of peaches was abandoned for a time,
as was his pet scheme of raising apples without any core.
The gardener wondered what there was about the South American
blossoms to require such close attention.
One day he thought he would find out, and he started to enter that part
of the conservatory where the pitcher plant was growing. Professor
Jonkin halted him before he had stepped inside and sternly bade him
never to appear there again.
As the gardener, crestfallen, moved away after a glimpse into the
forbidden region he muttered: "My, that plant has certainly grown! And
I wonder what the professor was doing so close to it. Looked as if he
was feeding the thing."
As the days went by the conduct of Professor Jonkin became more and
more curious. He scarcely left the southern end of the conservatory,
save at night, when he entered his house to sleep.
He was a bachelor, and had no family cares to trouble him, so he could
spend all his time among his plants. But hitherto he had divided his
attention among his many experiments in the floral kingdom.

Now he was always with his mysterious pitcher plant. He even had his
meals sent into the green-house.
"Be you keepin' boarders?" asked the butcher boy of the gardener one
day, passing on his return to the store, his empty basket on his arm.
"No. Why?"
"The professor is orderin' so much meat lately. I thought you had
company."
"No, there's only us two. Mr. Adams used to come to dinner once in a
while, but not lately."
"Then you an' the professor must have big appetites."
"What makes you think so?"
"The number of beefsteaks you eat."
"Number of beefsteaks? Why, my lad, the professor and I are both
vegetarians."
"What's them?"
"We neither of us eat a bit of meat. We don't believe it's healthy."
"Then what becomes of the three big porterhouse steaks I deliver to the
professor in the green-house every day?"
"Porterhouse steaks?" questioned the gardener, amazed. "Do you feed
'em to the dog?"
"We don't keep a dog."
But the butcher boy questioned no further, for he saw a chum and
hastened off to join him.
"Three porterhouse steaks a day!" mused the gardener, shaking his head.

"I do hope the professor has not ceased to be a vegetarian. Yet it looks
mighty suspicious. And he's doing it on the sly, too, for there's been no
meat cooked in the house, of that I'm sure."
And the gardener, sorely puzzled over the mystery, went off, shaking
his head more solemnly than before.
He resolved to have a look in the place the professor guarded so
carefully. He tried the door when he was sure his master was in another
part of the conservatory, but it was locked, and no key the gardener had
would unfasten it.
A month after the gardener had heard of the porterhouse steaks, Adams
happened to drop in to see the professor again.
"He's in with the Sarracenia Nepenthis," said the gardener in answer to
the visitor's inquiry. "But I doubt if he will let you enter."
"Why won't he?"
"Because he's become mighty close-mouthed of late over that pitcher
plant."
"Oh, I guess he'll see me," remarked Adams confidently, and he
knocked on the door that shut off the locked section of the green-house
from the main portion.
"Who's there?" called the professor.
"Adams."
"Oh," in a more conciliatory tone. "I was just wishing you'd come along.
I have something to show you."
Professor Jonkin opened the door, and the sight that met Adams' gaze
startled him.
The only plant in that part of the conservatory was a single specimen of
the Sarracenia Nepenthis. Yet it had attained such enormous

proportions that at first Adams thought he must be dreaming.
"What do. you think of that for an achievement in science?" asked the
professor proudly.
"Do you mean to say that is the small, fly-catching plant your