"Meaning the flowers or their donor?"--quizzically. "Or, no! Don't elucidate. Leave me in blissful ignorance. You have hurt my vanity quite enough as it is. I was deeply mortified--cut to the quick, I may say, if that will express my sense of grovelling shame any clearer--when I arrived here and saw what you were doing. Please, mum"--touching his forelock and scraping his foot backward after the manner of a groom--"did I make such a bad job of my work in that garden that when you want a bouquet you have to come out here and gather wild flowers? I put fifty-eight standard roses on that terrace just under your bedroom window, and surely there must be a bloom or two that you could gather?" "As if I would cut one of them for anything in the world!" she gave back, indignantly. Then she laughed, and blushed and stepped back from his impetuous advance. "No--please! You fished for that so adroitly that you landed it before I thought. Be satisfied. Besides, Mrs. Condiment is at her window, and I want to preserve as much as possible of her rapidly depreciating estimate of me. She thinks me a very frivolous young person, 'to allow that young Mr. Hamilton to call so frequent, miss, and if you'll allow me to say it, at such unseemly hours. I don't think as dear Captain Burbage would quite approve of it if he knew.'" "Gad! that's rich. What a mimic you are. It was the dear old girl to the life. She hasn't an inkling of the truth, then?" "Not one. She doesn't quite approve of you, either. 'I likes to see a gent more circumpec', miss, and a trifle more reserved when he's gettin' on his thirties. Muckin' about with a garden fork and such among a trumpery lot of roses, and racin' here, there, and everywhere over them medders after ferns and things, like a schoolboy on a holiday, aren't what I calls dignified deportment in full-grown men, and in my day they didn't use to do it!' Sometimes I am in mortal terror that she intends to give me notice and to leave me bag and baggage; for she is always saying that she's 'sure dear Captain Burbage couldn't have known what he was a-doing of, poor, innocent, kind-hearted gentleman--and him so _much_ of a gent, too, and so wonderful quiet and sedate!'" "Poor old girl!" said Cleek, laughing. "What a shock to her if she knew the truth. And what on earth _would_ you do if she were to chance to get a peep at Dollops? But then, of course, there's no fear of that--the young beggar's too careful. I told him never to come near the house when he carries any notes." "And he never does. Always leaves them under the stone in the path through the woods. I go there, of course, twice every day, and I never know that he has been about until I find one. I am always glad to get them, but to-day's one made me very, very happy indeed." "Because I told you you might expect me?"