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ace, or sewing, or anything like that you can send to my mother, I have no doubt she will pay you for it as well as any one else--"
"I was not thinking of paying, sir; but to show you I am not ungrateful," was the answer; and if she said hun-grateful, what matter? She was a woman without spirit; she had sold away her son.
From this dingy court he made his way round to Covent Garden market, and he went into a florist's shop there.
"I want a bouquet," said he to the neat-handed maiden who looked up at him.
"Yes, sir," said she; "will you look at those in the window?"
"But I want one," said he, "with a single rose--a red rose--in the centre."
This proposition did not find favor in the eyes of the mild-mannered artist, who explained to him that something more important and ornate was necessary in the middle of a bouquet. He could have a circle of rose-buds, if he liked, outside; and a great white lily or camellia in the centre. He could have--this thing and the next; she showed him how she could combine the features of this bouquet with those of the next. But the tall Highlander remained obdurate.
"Yes," said he, "I think you are quite right. You are quite right, I am sure. But it is this that I would rather have--only one red rose in the centre, and you can make the rest what you like, only I think if they were smaller flowers, and all white, that would be better."
"Very well," said the young lady, with a pleasing smile (she was rather good-looking herself). "I will try what I can do for you if you don't mind waiting. Will you take a chair?"
He was quite amazed by the dexterity with which those nimble fingers took from one cluster and another cluster the very flowers he would himself have chosen; and by the rapid fashion in which they were dressed, fitted, and arranged. The work of art grew apace.
"But you must have something to break the white," said she, smiling, "or it will look too like a bride's bouquet;" and with that--almost in the