As the old man saw Nathalie glance up at him in ill-concealed astonishment at his aptness in repeating the poetic quotation, he smiled and said, “Ah, Miss, I have planted, transplanted, trained, tended, and watched these sweet posies for many a long year as carefully as a mother-hen tends her tiny chicks. But it was my dear lady, herself, who taught me that verse, and sure I have never forgotten it, although I do not know the name of the poet-man who wrote it.” Nathalie, with her hand in Mona’s, who seemed to love to hold it, was now led by her into the little shed, where she was soon busily employed in helping her tie the sweet peas into bunches, to be delivered the next morning to the hotels by Jakes. From the making of bouquets she wandered into the tea-room, where Mona had hurried, on seeing a couple of young ladies come in, who wanted to buy some post-cards. While they were selecting them the deaf-and-dumb woman hastened into the kitchen for her tea-tray. Nathalie, meanwhile, waited by the little glass case in one corner of the room, carelessly studying the mountain-views that lined it, and where boxes of maple sugar, pine pillows, and various knick-knacks that Miss Whipple said she had made before her hands had become so helpless, lay scattered about for sale. As she turned restlessly away from the case, her glance fell on the two girls, who stood examining the cards on the wall near, and she half smiled at their grotesqueness, as she called their modish style of apparel. For the girls, fair samples of the average fashionable summer girls, wore their hair plastered down on the sides of their faces in deep scallops, while their cheeks were carmine-tinted, and their noses whitewashed with powder. With their long, thin necks rising in kangaroo fashion from their turn-over, low-necked collars, and with their short-waisted belts and narrow skirts, high above their high-heeled, white boots, they reminded Nathalie of some funny French dolls that she had seen once in a museum in New York. She was wondering why so many girls of the present day thought it improved them to make themselves so ungainly and painted-looking, when one of the girls suddenly turned her face to her. A sudden exclamation, and she had stepped towards Nathalie, who was now staring at her in puzzled recognition. “I declare, if it isn’t Nathalie Page. Why, don’t you remember me?” she shrilled excitedly. “I’m Nelda Sackett. You remember we used to be deskmates at Madame Chemidlin’s?” “Why, Nelda, how do you do? Yes, I remember you now,” smiled Nathalie cordially. “How stupid of me not to have recognized you before. But dear me, you have changed!” And then, fearing that the girl might detect her lack of admiration for her modish appearance, she hastily added, “Oh, you have grown to be quite a young lady.”