re for aunt," said he, "to propitiate her for my being late last
night. I wasn't in till one. I'm worse even than you, you see, and the
next time you are out till eleven and I let you in and grumble at you, you
can hit back. Have a flower."

He gave her the finest in his bunch and Phyl put it in her belt. If she
had any doubt as to the sincerity of his welcome his manner this morning
ought to have set her mind at rest.

She stood looking at him as he tied the stalks of the flowers together and
he was worth looking at, a fresh, bright figure, the very incarnation of
youth and health and one might almost say innocence. Clear eyed,
well-groomed, good to look upon.

"I generally pick a flower and put it on her plate," said he, "but this
morning she shall have a whole bunch--hope you slept all right?"

"Rather," said Phyl, "I never sleep much the first night in a new
place--but somehow--oh, I don't know how to express it--but nothing here
seems new."

"Nothing is," said he laughing, "it's all as old as the hills--you like
it, don't you?"

"It's not a question of liking--of course I like it, who could help liking
it--it's more than that. It's a feeling I have that I will either love it
or hate it, and I don't know which yet, all sorts of things come back to
me here, you see, my mother knew the place--do people remember what their
mothers and fathers knew, I wonder? But, if you understood me, it's not so
much remembering as feeling. All yesterday it seemed to me that I had only
to turn some corner and come upon something waiting for me, something I
knew quite well, and the smells and sounds and things are always reminding
me of something--you know how it is when you have forgotten a name and
when it's lying just at the back of your mind--that's how I feel here,
about nearly everything--strange, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the practical Pinckney. "This place is awfully
English for one thing, sure to remind you of a lot of things in Ireland
and England, and then there's of course the fact that you are partly
American, but I don't see why you should ever hate it."

"_Indeed_, I didn't mean that," said she flushing up at the thought that
in trying to express herself she had made such a blunder. "I meant--I
meant, that this something about the place that is always reminding me of
itself might make me hate _it_."

"Or love it?"

"Yes, but I can't explain--the place itself no one could hate, you must
have thought