“Oh, in England,” I replied, “I think they are almost too much blessed. There is such a thing as tranquillity and repose. You don’t want the personal equation at every meal. In England, especially in the academic parts, you can’t see the wood for the trees.” “And in America,” observed Delia, “I suppose it must be worse.” “Not at all,” I said out of my experience, “in America there is as yet great uniformity of peculiarity,” but this was going very far afield on a warm day, and we left the matter there. “I don’t think I like individuality in young men,” remarked Delia, thoughtfully, “In young men it seems a liberty, almost an impertinence.” I can imagine the normal attitude of young men toward Delia being quite satisfying, but I let her go on. “I have just met an A.D.C. riding up the Mall smoking a pipe,” she continued. “He took off his hat to me like a bandit.” Now Simla’s traditions of behaviour are very strict and the choicest of them are locked up in the _tenue_ of an aide-de-camp. “It was quite a shock,” said Delia. “All things are possible in nature, but some are rare,” I told her. “It is doubtless a remote effect of all this Irregular Horse in South Africa. You may live to boast that you have seen an aide-de-camp ride up the Mall at Simla smoking a common clay.” “It wasn’t a common clay,” she corrected me. “But it will be when you boast of it,” I assured her. “Come and see my home for decayed gentlewomen.” “What _do_ you mean?” she cried, and would have buffeted me; but I led her with circumstance to the edge of the shelf, over which appeared lower down on the khud-side, another small projection which tried to be a shelf and couldn’t, but was still flat enough for purposes. There were sitting, in respectable retirement, all the venerable roses that had outlived delight, the common kinds and those that had grown little worth in the service of the summer. “They had to come out,” I explained, “and I couldn’t find it in my heart to throw them on the ash-heap.” “With all their modest roots exposed,” put in Delia. “Cruel it would have been.” “So I planted them down there, and I see that they’re not altogether neglected. They get an allowance of four buckets of water a day and a weeding once a fortnight,” I explained further, “but what I fancy they must feel most is that nobody ever picks them. I can’t get down to do that.” “I’m sure they look most comfortable,” Delia assured me. “What do they care about being picked? You lose that vanity very early”--oh, Delia!--“What they really enjoy is to sit in the sun and talk about their gout. But I know what you mean about throwing away a flower”--and Delia’s eyes grew more charming with the sentiment behind them. “Somebody gave me a sweet-pea yesterday and the poor little thing faded on me, as we say in Ireland, and of course I ought to have thrown it away, but I couldn’t. What do you think I did with it?” She looked half ashamed. “What?” “_I put it in my pocket!_” said this dear Delia.