es!" he said--"Not much good to myself or to any
one else! You'd better bundle me out on the doorstep!"

For an answer she brought him a little cup of nourishing broth tastily
prepared and bade him drink it--"every drop, mind!"--she told him with a
little commanding nod. He obeyed her,--and when he gave her back the cup
empty he said, with a keen glance:

"So I am your father's friend, am I, Mary?"

The blood rushed to her cheeks in a crimson tide,--she looked at him
appealingly, and her lips trembled a little.

"You were so very ill!" she murmured--"I was afraid you might die,--and
I had to send for the only doctor we have in the village--Mr.
Bunce,--the boys call him Mr. Dunce, but that's their mischief, for
he's really quite clever,--and I was bound to tell him something by way
of introducing you and making him take care of you--even--even if what I
said wasn't quite true! And--and--I made it out to myself this way--that
if father had lived he would have done just all he could for you, and
then you _would_ have been his friend--you couldn't have helped
yourself!"

He kept his eyes upon her as she spoke. He liked to see the soft
flitting of the colour to-and-fro in her face,--- her skin was so clear
and transparent,--a physical reflection, he thought, of the clear
transparency of her mind.

"And who was your father, Mary?" he asked, gently.

"He was a gardener and florist,"--she answered, and taking from the
mantelshelf the photograph of the old man smiling serenely amid a
collection of dwarf and standard roses, she showed it to him--"Here he
is, just as he was taken after an exhibition where he won a prize. He
was so proud when he heard that the first prize for a dwarf red rose had
been awarded to James Deane of Barnstaple. My dear old dad! He was a
good, good man--he was indeed! He loved the flowers--he used to say that
they thought and dreamed and hoped, just as we do--and that they had
their wishes and loves and ambitions just as we have. He had a very good
business once in Barnstaple, and every one respected him, but somehow he
could not keep up with the demands for new things--'social sensations in
the way of flowers,' he used to call them, and he failed at last,
through no fault of his own. We sold all we had to pay the creditors,
and then we came away from Barnstaple into Somerset, and took this
cottage. Father did a little business in the village, and for some of
the big houses round about,--not much,