tten to get any flowers to carry home with us. But I suppose you
see too many of them through the week to care for them to-day."

"Oh, no!" replied Therese. "I could never see too much of flowers;
and besides, you must have a bunch to carry home to Mademoiselle this
evening. She will never forgive you, if you neglect her to-day. And what
would she think or say, if she knew where you are now and whom you are
with? She is very fond of flowers,--when they come from you, I mean."

"Well," I stammered, and my face burned like fire. "What Mademoiselle?
And what makes you think that I make presents of the flowers I get of
you? I only get them for myself, and as an excuse for seeing you."

"_Ah! menteur_!" cried Therese, shaking her finger at me with mock
solemnity. "_Fi donc! c'est vilain._ Do you think I have no eyes, or
that you have none that speak as plainly as your mouth, and more truly?
You try to deceive me, Monsieur!" and the little hypocrite assumed so
injured and heart-broken an expression and tone, that I was almost wild
with remorse, and cursed the wretch who had placed the flowers in the
room, and myself for having noticed them. I should have been hurried
into I don't know what expressions of attachment to her and of
indifference towards every other individual of her sex, if she had not
prevented me by the following startling remark.

"I know to whom you give the flowers you value so much as coming from
me. It is to your next-door neighbor, who pleases you more than I do,
and whom you have known, perhaps, longer than you have me. Why didn't
you invite her, and not me, to come with you to-day? It would have been
better."

"Ah!" cried I, "do you know her? She told you about it? Why doesn't she
let me see her? Is her name Hermine?"

And almost before I knew it, I had told her the whole story of my
passion for my invisible neighbor.

Therese pouted, and turned her back. She put her handkerchief to her
face, and called me all sorts of hard names for having brought her there
to listen to the confession of my love for another; and turned a deaf
ear, or I thought she did, to my expostulations and my protestations
that I didn't really care for Hermine,--that it was only a passing
fancy, more curiosity than anything else,--and that I really loved no
one but her.

She began to relent at last, though I was half inclined to be sorry, for
her resentment became her even better than her good-humor.

"Well," she said, fi