profusion of loose flowers.

"What shall we do with these?" asked Lynde, pointing to the latter.

"Set 'em around somewhere," said Flemming, with cheerful vagueness.

Lynde disposed the flowers around the room to the best of his judgment;
he hung some among the glass pendants of the chandelier, gave a nosegay
to each of the two gilt statuettes in the corners, and piled the
remainder about the base of a monumental clock on the mantelpiece.

"That's rather a pretty idea, isn't it?--wreathing Time in flowers,"
remarked Flemming, with honest envy of his friend's profounder depth of
poetic sentiment.

"I thought it rather neat," said Lynde, who had not thought of it at
all.

In the course of that dinner if two or three unexplained demure smiles
flitted over Miss Denham's face, they might, perhaps, have been
indirectly traced to these floral decorations, though they pleased her
more than if a woman's hand had been visible in them.

"Flemming," said Lynde, with a severe aesthetic air, "I don't think that
arrangement in the fireplace is quite up to the rest of the room."

"Nor I either," said Flemming, who had been silently admiring it for the
last ten minutes.

The fireplace in question was stuffed with a quantity of long,