The flower scheme failed to prosper, but Rose did not give up London. Even if there were not the same objection to returning to live with me, she had probably lost the wish to do so. I am sure that she was fond of me, but she had made new friends. London was full of variety and attraction, and she had contracted the habit of employment and liked it. I don’t know anything about the economics of a florist’s business, except that to me the thought of having to pay money for flowers is repellent: flowers, one feels, should be free to all; but Mrs. Lovell had not enough experience and Rose was quite capable of giving a bunch of daffodils away rather than haggle over the price. Moreover, the time was not ripe for the professional arranger. I do not know that it is even yet. To Mrs. Lovell, however, Rose remained true, and therefore continued with her as an ally in her next scheme, which was an old curiosity shop. Not an old curiosity shop where oddity was the prevailing note, but an old curiosity shop where everything had some beauty, either of shape or colour, or was picturesquely obsolete. Such shops, I have observed on my London expeditions, are now very numerous, but Mrs. Lovell’s was one of the first. They are usually directed by women. Just as a man may sell wine or be secretary to a golf club and lose no caste, so may what we call ladies keep these shops. Blue and green and purple glass; old stuff for patchwork quilts; spinning wheels; Stafford and Leeds jugs; lace; amber necklaces; beads; brass pestles and mortars; painted rolling-pins; early Victorian dolls—the place was full of things of that kind, and Rose, in a charming smock, was standing in the midst of it on the day that I unexpectedly looked in, smilingly engaged in the task—an easy one—of selling a very young and obviously adoring curate a warming-pan: not, as he was explaining, for use, but for decoration. On seeing me she blushed very becomingly and nearly broke the little divine’s heart by her too apparent eagerness to turn to the new customer. Rose begged the afternoon off—and it was the kind of shop that did itself very little harm by shutting up for the whole day now and then—and we met for lunch and then loitered about in Kew Gardens. “Has that little curate proposed to you yet?” I asked. “Not yet,” said Rose. “Any one else?” “One or two,” she replied. “I suppose a great many men come to that shop?” I said. “Oh yes. They’re very jolly too, some of them, until they fall in love; and then they’re so dull. Isn’t it funny what a difference it makes? And then they propose and I lose them.” And I, I thought to myself, have lost Rose! Is loss the rule of life? It seems to be. * * * * * It was on one of Rose’s week-end visits just before she was twenty that she took out a photograph and handed it to me. The photograph was an amateur snapshot of a group on a lawn, among whom was Rose. “Quite good of you,” I said.