The duke never tried to improve her mind with botany.

But she learned much country lore from him, the names and habits of many birds and small animals.

In spite of his exalted station, he was a simple soul; and he had retained his boyish interest in the furred and feathered world of the woods and meadows round the court.

Also he enjoyed telling Pollyooly things.
Unconsciously, but quite accurately, he regarded her as his intellectual equal; and it pleased him very much to tell her things she did not know.

It gave him a sense of passing, but genuine superiority, a feeling his fellow creatures seldom inspired into him.
Sometimes he wondered why he had never thought of making a companion of Marion.