"If the most noble will tarry, this slave will at least make the luck-offering to the bride," came the voice again, and to point its meaning the delicate brown hand held up a circular shallow basket heaped with rose-petals. Heaped so lightly, that the hand held it level, and it seemed to glide on the top of the bushes, heralding the grizzled head which slid after it with a faintly undulating movement. The cause of this became clear when the limit of the roses was reached. Hushmut the essence-maker must have been a cripple from birth. The loose blue cloth, such as gardeners wear knotted round their loins like a petticoat, hid, however, all deformity, even when he clambered up the marble edge of the old water-way, and shuffled with sidelong jerks along the path to the pink muslin flounces. The wearer's eyes grew soft suddenly. The mystery of such births came home to the woman who was so soon to be a wife, perhaps a mother. She gave him a mother's look anyhow; the look of almost passionate pity a woman gives to a child's deformity. Perhaps he saw it. Anyhow he paused; then, with his bold black eyes twinkling, held out the basket. "A handful, _Huzoor_, for luck!" he cried. "A rose ungathered is but a rose, Pluck it, lover, don't mind a thorn; Tuck it away in your bosom-clothes, And drink its beauty from night to morn." The voice trilled and bubbled quite decorously, but the young Englishman intercepted a deliberate wink, and felt inclined to kick Hushmut to lower levels; till he remembered that the girl could not understand. "Take a handful," he said, "and let's get rid of him." The girl obeyed, but, by mere chance, the little white hand with his ring on it did tuck its handful of pink rose-leaves away in the loose pink ruffles on her breast. Whereat Hushmut's approval became so unmistakable that the young Englishman felt that the only thing was to escape from it. Yet as he hurried the girl back to the summerhouse he turned to listen to the essence-maker's voice as he went on with his song, and his rose-picking. "Dig, gardener! deep; till the Earth-lips cling tight. Prune, gardener! keep those blushes to the light. Then, gardener, sleep! he brings the scent by night. Who knows The secret of the perfume of the rose?" There was nothing to be seen now but the stunted grey green bushes half hidden in blossom; even the head had disappeared. They were a queer people, thought the young man, very difficult to understand. Then the refrain returned to him-- "Who knows The secret of the perfume of the rose?"