"And how sorry I am for those who did not get up in time to enjoy
the freshness of its beauty!" cried a gay voice from the portico,
and Mabel entered by the glass door behind him--her hands loaded
with roses, herself so beaming that her lover refrained with
difficulty from kissing the saucy mouth then and there.
He did take both her hands, under pretext of relieving her of the
flowers, and Aunt Rachel judiciously turned her back upon them, and
began a diligent search in the beaufet for a vase.
"Do you expect us to believe that you have been more industrious
than we? As if we did not know that you bribed the gardener to have
a bouquet cut and laid ready for you at the back-door," Frederic
charged upon the matutinal Flora. "Else, where are other evidences
of your stroll, in dew-sprinkled draperies and wet feet? Confess
that you ran down stairs just two minutes ago! Now that I come to
think of it, I am positive that I heard you, while Mrs. Sutton was
lamenting your drowsy proclivities after sunrise."
"I have been sitting in the summer-house for an hour--reading!"
protested Mabel, wondrously resigned to the detention, after a
single, and not violent attempt at release. "If you had opened your
shutters you must have seen me. But I knew I was secure from
observation on that side of the house, at least until eight o'clock,
about which time the glories of the new day usually penetrate very
tightly-closed lids. As to dew--there isn't a drop upon grass or
blossom. And, by the same token, we shall have a storm within
twenty-four hours."
"Is that true? That is a meteorological presage I never heard of
until now."
"There is a moral in it, which I leave you to study out for
yourself, while I arrange the roses I--and not the
gardener--gathered."
In a whisper, she subjoined--"Let me go! Some one is coming!" and in
a second more was at the sideboard, hurrying the flowers into the
antique china bowl, destined to grace the centre of the breakfast
table.
"Good-morning, Miss Rosa. You are just in season to enjoy the
society of your sister," Frederic said, lightly, pointing to the
billows of mingled white and red, tossing under Mabel's fingers.
The new-comer approached the sideboard, leaned languidly upon her
elbow, and picked up a half-blown bud at random from the pile.
"They are scentless!" she complained.
"Because dewless!" replied Mabel, with profound gravity. "It is the
tearful heart that gives out the sweetest fragrance."