though, I declare," and he buried his face in a fragrant rose, then
involuntarily hummed--

"How sweet the breath beneath the hill.
Of Sharon's dewy rose."

Another prolonged inhalation and he called, "Mother, come here and
smell this pink; it's the very one that my mother used to border her
flowerbeds with when I was a boy." Then he gave the bouquet into
Edna's care while he went off, in imagination, into his mother's
garden, tied up the sweet peas and trained the morning-glories once
again. How each flower, like a dear human face, stood before him
looking into his eyes. The damask roses, the Johnny-jump-ups,
larkspur, bachelor-buttons, ragged ladies, marigolds, hollyhocks, and
a host of others that are out of fashion now. That bouquet furnished
him a pleasant reverie for an hour. It brought no less pleasure to
Edna. Their new friend had not forgotten them, and her intuitions
told her for whom the lovely blossoms were intended.

After that it grew to be quite a thing of course for Mr. Samuel
Winters to receive a box of flowers. He always pretended to
appropriate them to himself, much to Edna's glee, as he did the not
infrequent visits of Mr. Monteith to "The Pines," often remarking,
after a pleasant evening's discussion--

"That is an uncommon young man, coming so far to chat with me. He's
one among a thousand; the most of them haven't time nowadays to give
a civil word to an old man."

He had a deeper purpose in this than might have been supposed. There