He favours his water-lilies mor'n females,--ah, an' I bet he'd give ten pound for a new specimen of a flower when he wouldn't lay out a 'apenny on a new specimen of a woman." Here, pausing in his reflections, he again looked cautiously round from his high vantage point of view on the ladder, and saw Walden break off a spray of white lilac from one bush of a very special kind near the edge of the lawn, and give it to Miss Vancourt. "Well, now that do beat me altogether!" he ejaculated under his breath. "If he's told me once, he's told me a 'undred times that he won't 'ave no blossoms broke off that bush on no account An' there he is a-pickin' of it hisself! That's a kind of thing which do make me feel that men is a poor feeble-minded lot,-- it do reely now!"

But feeble-minded or not, John had nevertheless gathered the choice flower, and moreover, had found a certain pleasure in giving it to his fair companion, who inhaled its delicious odour with an appreciative smile.

"What a dear old house you have!" she said, glancing up at the crossed timbers, projecting gables, and quaint dormer windows set like eyes in the roof--"I had no idea that it was so pretty! And the garden is perfectly lovely. It is so very artistic!--it looks like a woman's dream of a garden rather than a man's."