Ellen’s hands, outspread over the roses, dropped to her side.

“I would have thought he had more sense,” she said sulkily.  “If he’d money to burn he should have sent this lot to the infirmary.”

“Och, Ellen, are you not pleased?”

“What’s the man thinking of to fill us up with flowers as if we were an Episcopal church on Easter Sunday?”

“Ellen, you’ve no notion of manners.  Gentlemen often send flowers to ladies they admire.  When your Aunt Bessie and I were girls many’s the fine present of flowers we got from officers at the Castle.”

“I’ve neither time nor taste for such things.  It makes me feel like a hospital.  He’ll be sending us new-laid eggs and lint bandages next.  The man’s mad.”

“Ellen, you’re a queer girl,” complained.  Mrs. Melville.  “If this argy-bargying about votes for women makes you turn up your nose at bonny flowers that a decent fellow sends you I’m sorry for you—­it’s just tempting Providence to scorn good mercies like this.  I’ll away and take the fish-pie out of the oven.”

It was strange that as soon as her mother had left the room she began to feel differently about the roses.  Of course they were very beautiful; and they were contenting in a quite magic way, for besides satisfying her longing for pretty things, they seemed to have deprived of urgency all her other longings, even including her desire for a vote, for eminence of some severe sort, for an income of three hundred pounds a year (which was the most she believed a person with a social conscience could enjoy), for a perpetual ticket for the Paterson Concerts at the MacEwan Hall, and for perfect self-possession.  She felt as if these things were already hers, or as if they were coming so certainly that she need not fret about them any more than one frets about a parcel that one knows has been posted, or concerning some desires, as if it did not matter so much as she had thought whether she got them or not.  Especially that dream of being one of a company of men and women whose bodies should be grave as elms with dignity and whose words should be bright as butterflies with wit struck her as being foolish.  It was as idle as wanting to be born in the days of Queen Elizabeth.  What she really wanted was a friend.  She had felt the need of one since Rachael Wing went to London.  Surely Richard Yaverland meant to be her friend, since he sent flowers to her.  But she wished the gift could have been made secretly, and if he came to pay a visit she should be quite alone.  For no reason that she could formulate, the thought of even her mother setting eyes on them together seemed a threat of disgrace.  She wished that they could be standing side by side at the fire in that five minutes when it is sheer extravagance to light the gas but so dark that one may stare as one cannot by day, so that she might look at what the driving flamelight showed of his black, sea-roughened magnificence.  At her perfect memory of him she felt a rush of exhilaration which left her confused and glad and benevolent.