"One would think that I was a first floor lodger," she exclaimed, turning back to her work again, "instead of merely the attics. You'll be charging me for attendance soon, Isobel, if it goes on at this rate. Put it down on the table, please." Isobel looked distinctly disappointed. "But you ain't looked at 'em yet," she said. "I've seen flowers before," Jill answered. "They look very pretty and smell nice; but they'll soon die in this turpentine atmosphere." "Then you can keep the barskit," giggled the other. "I expect 'e thought o' that; 'e aint so green as I took 'im to be. Fancy you 'avin' a young man, Miss Herskine!" Jill did look round then, and her glance was withering in the extreme. "Explain your meaning, please," she said. "I don't understand jests like those." "It aint no jest," replied Isobel somewhat abashed but grinning still despite the snub. "I didn't mean no 'arm neither, only," edging toward the door and preparing for flight, "when a gent takes to sendin' flowers it's like when the lodgers begins complainin' o' the charges--the beginnin' of the hend, so to speak." The studio door slammed on her retreating figure, and her footsteps could be heard asserting themselves triumphantly in her descent--verily some people are born to make a noise in the world! Jill listened to them until they reached the next landing, then she laid down her charcoal and approached the table. For a minute she stood motionless regarding the flowers, then she smiled a little and bending forward drew out from among them a card though she hardly needed that to tell her from whom they came. "With Saint John's compliments," she read, and the smile on her lips widened until it broadened into a laugh. "If all your relations possessed the same amount of tact," she soliloquised, "what a model family yours would be." She laid her face against the flowers and laughed again, a soft quiet laugh full of enjoyment. "What a bright patch of sunshine in the old studio," she continued, smilingly caressing the blossoms, "and what a bright patch of sunshine in somebody's heart, my dear saint, what a warm, brilliant, altogether delightful patch to be sure." CHAPTER FOUR. On the next occasion that St. John made his appearance at the studio there was a visible constraint in his manner as there was also in Miss Erskine's. Jill had rehearsed a grateful little speech to deliver on his entry, but when their hands met there was silence; the speech, like many another rehearsed effect, had taken to itself wings, and all she could find to say after an awkward pause was,-- "Good morning. The weather seems to have turned milder, doesn't it?" And St. John's remarkably original answer was,-- "Really! Do you think so?"