he rose and rue!
Follow me, my bonny lad,
For I'll not follow you.

"Wi' heart in mout', in hope and doubt,
My lovers come and go:
My smiles receive, my smiles deceive;
Shall they not serve you so?
Heigho! the morning dew!
Heigho! the rose and rue!
Follow me, my bonny lad,
For I'll not follow you."

It was a delight to hear her.

"There now, I'll give yer my token. Hold out yer hands!"

Champney, hugging his banjo under one arm, made a cup of his hands.
Carefully measuring the distance, she dropped one rosebud into them.

"Put it on yer heart now," was the next command from above. He obeyed
with exaggerated gesture, to the great delight of the serenadee. "And
yer goin' to keep it?"

"Forever and a day." Champney made this assertion with a
hyper-sentimental inflection of voice, and, lifting the flower to his
nose, drew in his breath--

"Confound you, you little fiend--" he sneezed rather than spoke.

The sneeze was answered by a peal of laughter from above and a
fifteen-year-old's cracked "Haw-haw-haw" from the region of the Norway
spruces. Every succeeding sneeze met with a like response--roars of
laughter on the one hand and peal upon peal on the other. Even the
kitchen door began to give signs of life, for Hannah and Ann made their
appearance.

The strong white pepper, which Romanzo managed to procure from Hannah,
had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and
then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink
silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of
the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final
decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a
subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also
sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted
and, in the end, to put a good face on it. It is true he would have
preferred that Romanzo Caukins had not been witness to his defeat.

The sneezing and laughter gradually subsided. He sat down again on the
bench and taking up his banjo prepared, with somewhat elaborate effort,
to put it into its case. He said nothing.

"Say!" came in a sobered voice from above; "are yer mad with me?"

Ignoring both question and questioner, he took out his handkerchief,
wiped his face and forehead and, returning it to his pocket, heaved a
sigh of apparent exhaustion.

"I say, Mr. Champney Googe