"That sort of thing is all very well at a charity bazaar," Rosie affirmed. "Even then, I prefer selling flowers." "And charging extra for pinning them in the lucky purchaser's buttonhole?" he suggested. "Come and find out whether I do that at the next bazaar," she said. "She always does well at the flower stall," May commented. "That's why they ask her to serve. I don't see much difference between charging extra for pinning in a buttonhole and taking tips." "It's both a form of blackmail," Matheson asserted. "You don't believe in tipping then?" "Oh! I believe in it--it's too evident to be questioned; and custom, like the right of way through a person's property, legalises most things." "People are so much more civil when one tips them," Rosie observed. "If they return civility, that's value for one's money all right. But the civility depends largely on the amount of the tip," he said. The inference they drew from his remarks was that he inclined to meanness, and they both, under cover of searching for gloves and vanity bags, took a surreptitious interest in the proceedings that followed upon the presentation of the account which the neat Puritan waitress unobtrusively placed beside his plate, and then, even more unobtrusively, withdrew to a distance as though a tip were the last thing in the world she expected to receive or desired. He took up the check, glanced at the amount, placed sixpence on the table as unobtrusively as the Puritan girl had delivered his account, and was approaching the desk behind his gay companions when he felt a touch on his sleeve. "Your change, if you please." In the hand which had touched his arm, lying upon the open palm, was the sixpence he had left on the table. He felt awkward as his glance fell to it; it was difficult he found to explain. "That's all right," he was beginning over his shoulder, and broke off embarrassed before the persistence of that outstretched determined little hand so obviously refusing his munificence. "Thanks," he added hurriedly, and faced round. "I must have dropped it." He looked at her as he took the coin, a little curious about her. He hadn't noticed her when she served his party; he had been preoccupied, and she had kept in the background somehow. It flashed across his mind to wonder whether she had overheard any part of their talk, and resented his remarks about tipping. Then his eyes met hers, and the coin which he was in the act of taking slipped from his fingers and rolled away out of sight. "You!" he cried. His eager hand shot out and grasped the small one which had returned his money. "I have been trying to discover you for months. I thought I had lost you... And you've been here, close at hand, all the while!"