A few days after Christmas the stage-driver left at the door a small box marked “Samuel Winters.”  The old gentleman put on his glasses and opened it with much curiosity.  Behold, there lay a lovely bouquet of roses, carnations, and violets.  He lifted it with care, and a card marked “Hugh Monteith” fell from it.  “That is odd,” he said, with a roguish look at Edna, “to send these things to me; they are pretty, 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 were few things he did not think over as he sat looking into the fire.  What if this young man should unwittingly steal away his darling’s heart and then flit away to some other flower, and leave this, his own treasure, with all the soul gone out of her life.  He believed Mr. Monteith to be an honourable man, but then he would hedge this blossom of his about and guard it carefully.  There should be no opportunity for tender speech that meant nothing.

One day Edna was in town, passing through one of the busy streets.  Among the gay turnouts came one that caught her attention instantly:  a prancing span of grays before a light sleigh.  Among the furs and gay robes sat Mr. Monteith and a young lady, beautiful to Edna as a dream.  Even in the hurried glance she noted the pink and white complexion, the blue eyes peeping through golden frizzes, set off by a dark-blue velvet hat with a long white plume.  Mr. Monteith raised his hat and bowed low to Edna in pleased surprise.  Edna went on with a little pang at her heart; it might have been less had she known that Miss Paulina Percival’s invitation to ride came in this fashion:  Making it convenient to emerge from a store just as Mr. Monteith came from the bank and was about to step into his sleigh, she engaged him in conversation, then exclaimed: