So there was quite a little festivity on Winifred's account, the day
Gudrun returned to Shortlands.
'You should make a bunch of flowers to give to Miss Brangwen when she
arrives,' Gerald said smiling to his sister.
'Oh no,' cried Winifred, 'it's silly.' 'Not at all. It is a very charming and ordinary attention.' 'Oh, it is silly,' protested Winifred, with all the extreme MAUVAISE
HONTE of her years. Nevertheless, the idea appealed to her. She wanted
very much to carry it out. She flitted round the green-houses and the
conservatory looking wistfully at the flowers on their stems. And the
more she looked, the more she LONGED to have a bunch of the blossoms
she saw, the more fascinated she became with her little vision of
ceremony, and the more consumedly shy and self-conscious she grew, till
she was almost beside herself. She could not get the idea out of her
mind. It was as if some haunting challenge prompted her, and she had
not enough courage to take it up. So again she drifted into the
green-houses, looking at the lovely roses in their pots, and at the
virginal cyclamens, and at the mystic white clusters of a creeper. The
beauty, oh the beauty of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she
should have a perfect bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day.
Her passion and her complete indecision almost made her ill.
At last she slid to her father's side.
'Daddie--' she said.
'What, my precious?' But she hung back, the tears almost coming to her eyes, in her
sensitive confusion. Her father looked at her, and his heart ran hot
with tenderness, an anguish of poignant love.
'What do you want to say to me, my love?' 'Daddie--!' her eyes smiled laconically--'isn't it silly if I give Miss
Brangwen some flowers when she comes?' The sick man looked at the bright, knowing eyes of his child, and his
heart burned with love.
'No, darling, that's not silly. It's what they do to queens.' This was not very reassuring to Winifred. She half suspected that
queens in themselves were a silliness. Yet she so wanted her little
romantic occasion.
'Shall I then?' she asked.
'Give Miss Brangwen some flowers? Do, Birdie. Tell Wilson I say you are
to have what you want.' The child smiled a small, subtle, unconscious smile to herself, in
anticipation of her way.
'But I won't get them till tomorrow,' she said.
'Not till tomorrow, Birdie. Give me a kiss then--' Winifred silently kissed the sick man, and drifted out of the room. She
again went the round of the green-houses and the conservatory,
informing the gardener, in her high, peremptory, simple fashion, of
what she wanted, telling him all the blooms she had selected.