Most people believed that it was to be a preparatory rout to give _éclat_ to the expected announcement of an engagement between Colonel Dolickem and the heiress of the house of Criggles. The colonel believed it also. He had waited for a suitable opportunity to ask the hand and five-twenties of Miss Rosina, and now that opportunity had come. {129} Few would have had the courage to cross the path of a rival of so belligerent a disposition as the colonel. So thought the colonel himself. He was sure of Miss Criggles. Never be too sure of anything. Now it happened that in the course of the evening, somewhere about 12.30 A.M., Mr. Basher, after vainly endeavoring to get off one of the many sentences he had prepared beforehand, and practised with assiduity in front of his own reflection in his mirror, and in face of his grandfather's portrait as lay figures, and finding it no go, quietly abandoned himself to a sweeping current which just then formed in the crowd, and was borne along toward the half-open doors of the conservatory. Feeling, as everybody else did, pretty warm, and his face standing at the red-hot point of color, as indeed it had been since he rang the bell two hours and a half previous, he concluded to saunter a few minutes in the cool conservatory, and refresh his heated brow and his memory at the same time. Glancing first on one side and then on another at the flowers, his eye fell upon a rose-bush on which bloomed one full-blown rose. The sight of it reminded him of a toast he had prepared for this occasion, and which he devoutly hoped to be able to give amid the enthusiastic applause of the company and the grateful acknowledgments of the Being, and the parents of that Being, at whose feet he wished to blushingly throw himself, and be blushingly accepted in return. For Mr. John Basher loved Miss Rosina Criggles. The toast was this: "Miss Rosina, the Rose of the Garden of Criggles, and the Flower of the Conservatory of Fashion and Beauty. Happy the Hand that shall pluck it from the Parent Stem!" Once he repeated it in a low voice, a second time somewhat louder, to be sure of giving the right accent at the right words. Perfectly satisfied at his second rehearsal, he added in an audible voice: "If I dared, I would pluck that rose, (meaning the one on the bush before him,) in order to give--" Mr. Basher never did finish a sentence yet, but he might have accomplished this one had he not turned his head at a rustling sound, and seen approaching the Rose of the Garden of Criggles herself. Blushing his deepest, Mr. Basher stumbled out: "Cool here--ah--just admiring this--ah--" "Rose," added Miss Rosina, helping him out. "Beautiful, is it not, Mr. Basher?--and precious too. It is the only one left in the conservatory." "The conservatory of fashion, and--" Mr. Basher stopped short. It would never do to spoil the originality of his toast in that way.