It was a sheet of paper with two slits cut into it at top and bottom.  In these a carefully-pressed piece of None-so-pretty had been placed, and just underneath the flower was written in pencil, “From H.T. to W.R., May 2, 18—.”  He shut the book quickly, as if his fingers had been burned, and then he sat quite silent, with his heart beating fast.

So she had kept the flower he had put in the basket of primroses!  It had carried its message, and she still remained his friend!

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CUT DIRECT.

“Well, mother,” Miss Wenna said deliberately after he had gone, “I never did see you so thoroughly enjoy a whole day.”

“I was thinking the same about you, Wenna,” the mother answered with an amused look.

“That is true enough, mother,” the girl confessed in her simple way.  “He is so good-natured, so full of spirits and careless, that one gets quite as careless and happy as himself.  It is a great comfort, mother, to be with anybody who doesn’t watch the meaning of every expression you use:  don’t you think so?  And I hope I wasn’t rude:  do you think I was rude?”

“Why, child, I don’t think you could be rude to a fox that was eating your chickens.  You would ask him to take a chair and not hurry himself.”

“Well, I must write to Mabyn now,” Wenna said with a business-like air, “and thank her for posting me this Prayer-book.  I suppose she didn’t know I had my small one with me.”

She took up the book, for she was sitting on the chair that Harry Trelyon had just vacated.  She had no sooner done so than she caught sight of the sheet of paper with the dried flower and the inscription in Mabyn’s handwriting.  She stared, with something of a look of fear on her face.  “Mother,” she said in quite an altered voice, “did you notice if Mr. Trelyon was looking at this Prayer-book?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” Mrs. Rosewarne said.  “I should think he went over every book on the table.”

The girl said nothing, but she took the book in her hand and carried it up to her own room.  She stood for a moment irresolute:  then she took the sheet of paper with the flowers on it, and tore it in a hundred pieces and threw them into the empty grate.  Then she cried a little, as a girl must; and finally went down again and wrote a letter to Mabyn which rather astonished that young lady.

“MY DEAR MABYN” (so the letter ran):  I am exceedingly angry with you.  I did not think you were capable of such folly:  I might call it by a worse name if I thought you really meant what you seem to mean.  I have just torn up the worthless scrap of flower you so carefully preserved for me into a thousand pieces; but you will be glad to know that in all probability Mr. Trelyon saw it on the paper, and the initials too which you put there.  I cannot tell you how pained and angry I am.  If he did place that flower intentionally among the