"And how sorry I am for those who did not get up in time to enjoy

the freshness of its beauty!" cried a gay voice from the portico,

and Mabel entered by the glass door behind him--her hands loaded

with roses, herself so beaming that her lover refrained with

difficulty from kissing the saucy mouth then and there.

He did take both her hands, under pretext of relieving her of the

flowers, and Aunt Rachel judiciously turned her back upon them, and

began a diligent search in the beaufet for a vase.

"Do you expect us to believe that you have been more industrious

than we? As if we did not know that you bribed the gardener to have

a bouquet cut and laid ready for you at the back-door," Frederic

charged upon the matutinal Flora. "Else, where are other evidences

of your stroll, in dew-sprinkled draperies and wet feet? Confess

that you ran down stairs just two minutes ago! Now that I come to

think of it, I am positive that I heard you, while Mrs. Sutton was

lamenting your drowsy proclivities after sunrise."

"I have been sitting in the summer-house for an hour--reading!"

protested Mabel, wondrously resigned to the detention, after a

single, and not violent attempt at release. "If you had opened your

shutters you must have seen me. But I knew I was secure from

observation on that side of the house, at least until eight o'clock,

about which time the glories of the new day usually penetrate very

tightly-closed lids. As to dew--there isn't a drop upon grass or

blossom. And, by the same token, we shall have a storm within

twenty-four hours."

"Is that true? That is a meteorological presage I never heard of

until now."

"There is a moral in it, which I leave you to study out for

yourself, while I arrange the roses I--and not the

gardener--gathered."

In a whisper, she subjoined--"Let me go! Some one is coming!" and in

a second more was at the sideboard, hurrying the flowers into the

antique china bowl, destined to grace the centre of the breakfast

table.

"Good-morning, Miss Rosa. You are just in season to enjoy the

society of your sister," Frederic said, lightly, pointing to the

billows of mingled white and red, tossing under Mabel's fingers.

The new-comer approached the sideboard, leaned languidly upon her

elbow, and picked up a half-blown bud at random from the pile.

"They are scentless!" she complained.

"Because dewless!" replied Mabel, with profound gravity. "It is the

tearful heart that gives out the sweetest fragrance."




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