He gave her the finest in his bunch and Phyl put it in her belt. If she had any doubt as to the sincerity of his welcome his manner this morning ought to have set her mind at rest. She stood looking at him as he tied the stalks of the flowers together and he was worth looking at, a fresh, bright figure, the very incarnation of youth and health and one might almost say innocence. Clear eyed, well-groomed, good to look upon. "I generally pick a flower and put it on her plate," said he, "but this morning she shall have a whole bunch--hope you slept all right?" "Rather," said Phyl, "I never sleep much the first night in a new place--but somehow--oh, I don't know how to express it--but nothing here seems new." "Nothing is," said he laughing, "it's all as old as the hills--you like it, don't you?" "It's not a question of liking--of course I like it, who could help liking it--it's more than that. It's a feeling I have that I will either love it or hate it, and I don't know which yet, all sorts of things come back to me here, you see, my mother knew the place--do people remember what their mothers and fathers knew, I wonder? But, if you understood me, it's not so much remembering as feeling. All yesterday it seemed to me that I had only to turn some corner and come upon something waiting for me, something I knew quite well, and the smells and sounds and things are always reminding me of something--you know how it is when you have forgotten a name and when it's lying just at the back of your mind--that's how I feel here, about nearly everything--strange, isn't it?" "Oh, I don't know," said the practical Pinckney. "This place is awfully English for one thing, sure to remind you of a lot of things in Ireland and England, and then there's of course the fact that you are partly American, but I don't see why you should ever hate it." "_Indeed_, I didn't mean that," said she flushing up at the thought that in trying to express herself she had made such a blunder. "I meant--I meant, that this something about the place that is always reminding me of itself might make me hate _it_." "Or love it?" "Yes, but I can't explain--the place itself no one could hate, you must have thought me rude." "Not a bit--not the least little bit in the world. Well, I believe you'll come to love it, not hate it." "It," said Phyl. "I don't know that, because I don't know what it is--this something that is always peeping round corners at me yet hiding itself." "_Richard_!" came Miss Pinckney's voice from the piazza where she had just appeared, "smoking cigarettes before breakfast, how often have I told you I won't have you smoking before breakfast--why, God bless my soul, what are you doing with all those carnations?" He flung the cigarette-end away, but she refused to kiss him on account of the tobacco fumes, though she took the flowers.