The same kind of mute worship went on the next evening and the next. Towards the end of the week the old lady of a very humble class accosted him. Geff could remember the thrill of that moment yet. Away through the garden gloom did he not descry the flutter of a russet dress, the outline of a girlish head downbent over a bush of opening roses? The young gentleman would pardon her for taking such a liberty, but as he seemed fond of the country he might care sometimes for a bunch of cut flowers. She was a lone widow and lived too far off to send in her garden stuff to the Cambridge market except in wall-fruit time. If she could dispose, friendly like, of a few cut flowers it would be a little profit to her. Some of the University gentlemen, she had heard, dressed up their rooms, like a show, with flowers, and the roses and carnations this term were coming on wonderful. If the young gentleman would please to walk round the garden and see? The young gentleman walked round the garden. He bought as many flowers as his arms could carry away. He learned that the girl’s name was Dinah Thurston, that she was ‘apprenticed to the dressmaking,’ and had come up all the way out of Devonshire to spend a month’s holiday with the old lady, her father’s sister. The Devonshire burr in Dinah’s speech disenchanted him no more than did an occasional lapse or two in Dinah’s grammar. When is a stripling of his age disenchanted by anything save frowns or rivals? Geoffrey held original ideas on more than one burning social subject, had made up his mind--on the first evening he saw Dinah Thurston--that it was a duty for him and for every man to marry young. And he cared not one straw either for want of money, or for plebeian birth. Good, because healthy blood flowed in this girl’s veins, thought Geff--the incipient physiologist. Sweet temper was on her lips. A stainless woman’s soul looked forth from those fair eyes. She was above, only too much above him in every excellence, inward or external. What chance had he with his plain face, his shy student’s manner, of winning such a jewel as Dinah Thurston’s love? What hope was there that she would wait until the day, necessarily distant, when he would be able to work for a wife’s support? He became a daily caller at the cottage, and it is hard to suppose that both Dinah and Dinah’s protector were quite blind to the truth. Garden stuff was ever Geff’s ostensible object. He wanted cut flowers for himself, for an acquaintance who could not walk as far as Lesser Cheriton. He wanted radishes, cresses,--so different, he declared, to the stringy salad of College butteries! He wanted to know when the strawberries were likely to ripen. He wanted some daily excuse for gazing on Dinah Thurston’s face.