Something impelled her to keep silent, and she drew back a little to watch him. He went down the broad central path of the formal garden on to which her windows looked, on his way to the new rock-garden, which had been another of their spring enterprises. He had brought down the night before some big cases of rock-plants, and had evidently not been able to wait to go out and play with them. A very soft look came over Caroline's face as she watched him. She felt maternal. Men were so like babies, with their toys. And this was such a nice toy for the dear boy, and so different from the expensive grown-up toys he had played with before. He looked so young too, with his active straight-backed figure. At a back-view, with his hat hiding his hair, he might have been taken for quite a young man. And in mind he was one, especially when he was at home at Abington. There was none of all the young men with whom Caroline had made friends whom she liked better to be with, not only because she loved him, but because with none of them could she talk so freely or receive so much in return. There was nothing in her life about which she could not or did not talk to him. Francis Parry's proposal--she had not been at ease until she had told him about it and of all that was in her mind with regard to it. Surely they were nearer together than most fathers and daughters, and always would be so. She thought she would go down and help him with his plantings and potterings. She loved him so much that she wanted to see that look of pleasure on his face that she knew would come at the agreeable surprise she would bring him. Perhaps she would be able to steal up behind him without his seeing her, and then she would get this plain sign of his love for her and his pleasure in her unexpected appearance brought out of him suddenly. She had something more to tell him too. She dressed and went down. She collected her garden gloves, a trowel and a trug, and then went into the empty echoing back regions where the cases of plants had been unpacked, and took out some more of the little pots. They were mostly thymes, in every creeping variety. She knew what he was going to do, then--furnish the rocky staircase, which he and two of the gardeners had built themselves, after the main part of the rock-garden had been finished and planted with professional assistance. It was rather late to be planting anything, but garden novices take little heed of seasons when they are once bitten with the planting and moving mania, and if some of the plants should be lost they could replace them before the next flowering season.