ering
airs, sweeter to breathe than nectar is to drink. She caught a
butterfly, basking on a jimson weed, and, before she let it go, held it
out to him in her hand. It was a white butterfly. He asked which was the
butterfly.

"Bravo!" she said, tossing the captive craft above their heads and
watching the small sails catch the breeze; "And so you can make little
flatteries in the morning, too. It is another courtesy you should be
having from me, if it weren't for the dustiness of it. Wait till we come
to the board walk."

She had some big, pink roses at her waist. "In the meantime," he
answered, indicating these, "I know very well a lad that would be blithe
to accept a pretty token of any lady's high esteem."

"But you have one, already, a very beautiful one." She gave him a genial
up-and-down glance from head to foot, half quizzical, but so quick he
almost missed it. And then he was glad he had found the straw hat with
the youthful ribbon, and all his other festal vestures. "And a very
becoming flower a white rose is," she continued, "though I am a bold
girl to be blarneying with a young gentleman I met no longer ago than
last night."

"But why shouldn't you blarney with a gentleman, when you began by
saving his life?"

"Or, rather, when the gentleman had the politeness to gallop about
the county with me tucked under his arm?" She stood still and laughed
softly, but consummately, and her eyes closed tight with the mirth of
it. She had taken one of the roses from her waist, and, as she stood,
holding it by the long stem, its petals lightly pressed her lips.

"You may have it--in exchange," she said. He bent down to her, and she
began to fasten the pink rose in place of the white one on his coat. She
did not ask him, directly or indirectly, who had put the white one there
for him, because she knew by the way it was pinned that he had done it
himself. "Who is it that ev'ry morning brings me these lovely flow'rs?"
she burlesqued, as he bent over her.

"'Mr. Wimby,'" he returned. "I will point him out to you. You must see
him, and, also, Mr. Bodeffer, the oldest inhabitant--and crossest."

"Will you present them to me?"

"No; they might talk to you and take some of my time with you away from
me." Her eyes sparkled into his for the merest fraction of a second,
and she laughed half mockingly. Then she dropped his lapel and they
proceeded. She did not put the white rose in her belt, but carried it.

The Square was