found how soundly she had slept. “Mamma would not let me call you,” said Agatha, coming into her room; “she said you were very tired last night; but do please come down now, and make haste. There is such a basket of flowers in the hall from Whitton, the man says. Where’s Whitton? Isn’t it Mr. Incledon’s place? But make haste, Rose, for breakfast, now that you are awake.” So she had no time to think just then, but had to hurry down-stairs, where her mother met her with something of a wistful look, and kissed her with a kind of murmured half apology. “I am afraid I frightened you last night, Rose.” “Oh, no, not frightened,” the girl said, taking refuge among the children, before whom certainly nothing could be said; and then Agatha and Patty surged into the conversation, and all gravity or deeper meaning was taken out of it. Indeed, her mother was so cheerful that Rose would almost have hoped she was to hear no more of it, had it not been for the cluster of flowers which stood on the table and the heaped-up bunches of beautiful purple grapes which filled a pretty Tuscan basket, and gave dignity to the bread and butter. This was a sign of the times which was very alarming; and I do not know why it was, unless it might be by reason of her youth, that those delicate and lovely things--fit offerings for a lover--never moved her to any thought of what it was she was rejecting, or tempted her to consider Mr. Incledon’s proposal as one which involved many delightful things along with himself, who was not delightful. This idea, oddly enough, did not find any place in her mind, though she was as much subject to the influence of all that was lovely and pleasant as any girl could be. The morning passed, however, without any further words on the subject, and her heart had begun to beat easier and her excitement to calm down, when Mrs. Damerel suddenly came to her, after the children’s lessons, which was now their mother’s chief occupation. She came upon her quite unexpectedly, when Rose, moved by their noiseless presence in the room, and unable to keep her hands off them any longer, had just commenced, in the course of her other arrangements (for Rose had to be a kind of upper housemaid, and make the drawing-room habitable after the rough and ready operation which Mary Jane called “tidying”), to make a pretty group upon a table in the window of Mr. Incledon’s flowers. Certainly they made the place look prettier and pleasanter than it had ever done yet, especially as one stray gleam of sunshine, somewhat pale, like the girl herself, but cheery, had come glancing in to light up the long, low, quaint room and caress the flowers. “Ah, Rose, they have done you good already!” said her mother; “you look more like yourself than I have seen you for many a day.” Rose took her hands from the last flower-pot as if it had burned her, and stood aside, so angry and vexed to have been found at this occupation that she could have cried.