This morning David laid a sprig of sweet-scented balm at his mother’s place, two or three rosy daisies at Kitty’s, and a bunch of Christie’s favorite violets at hers.  She smiled as her eye went from the scentless daisies, so pertly pretty, to her own posy full of perfume, and the half sad, half sweet associations that haunt these blue-eyed flowers.

“I wanted pansies for you, but not one would bloom; so I did the next best, since you don’t like roses,” said David, as Christie stood looking at the violets with a thoughtful face, for something in the peculiarly graceful arrangement of the heart-shaped leaves recalled another nosegay to her mind.

“I like these very much, because they came to me in the beginning of this, the happiest year of my life;” and scarcely knowing why, except that it was very sweet to talk with David in the early sunshine, she told about the flowers some one had given her at church.  As she finished she looked up at him; and, though his face was perfectly grave, his eyes laughed, and with a sudden conviction of the truth, Christie exclaimed!

“David, I do believe it was you!”

“I couldn’t help it:  you seemed so touched and troubled.  I longed to speak to you, but didn’t dare, so dropped the flowers and got away as fast as possible.  Did you think it very rude?”

“I thought it the sweetest thing that ever happened to me.  That was my first step along a road that you have strewn with flowers ever since.  I can’t thank you, but I never shall forget it.”  Christie spoke out fervently, and for an instant her heart shone in her face.  Then she checked herself, and, fearing she had said too much, fell to slicing bread with an energetic rapidity which resulted in a cut finger.  Dropping the knife, she tried to get her handkerchief, but the blood flowed fast, and the pain of a deep gash made her a little faint.  David sprung to help her, tied up the wound, put her in the big chair, held water to her lips, and bathed her temples with a wet napkin; silently, but so tenderly, that it was almost too much for poor Christie.

For one happy moment her head lay on his arm, and his hand brushed back her hair with a touch that was a caress:  she heard his heart beat fast with anxiety; felt his breath on her cheek, and wished that she might die then and there, though a bread-knife was not a romantic weapon, nor a cut finger as interesting as a broken heart.  Kitty’s voice made her start up, and the blissful vision of life, with David in the little house alone, van ished like a bright bubble, leaving the hard reality to be lived out with nothing but a woman’s pride to conceal a woman’s most passionate pain.

“It’s nothing:  I’m all right now.  Don’t say any thing to worry your mother; I’ll put on a bit of court-plaster, and no one will be the wiser,” she said, hastily removing all traces of the accident but her own pale face.

“One happy moment.”