ked, his eyes feasting upon the sight of
her as she filled her arms with the gay masses, her face eager with her
pleasure in them.

"Yes, indeed. Or else you get out a jackknife and hack off great
handfuls of them at once, and bring them back all bleeding from your
ruthless attack."

"I see. And you gather them delicately, so they don't mind, I suppose.
Yet--I was given to understand that 'Susquehanna' died first. I've
always wondered what you did to her. I'd banked on her as the huskiest
of the lot."

She flashed a quick look at him, compounded of surprise, mirth, and
something else whose nature he could not guess. "'Susquehanna' was
certainly a wonderful rose," she admitted.

"Yet only next morning she was sadly drooping. I know, because I
received a report of her. And I lost my wager."

"You should have known better," she said demurely, her head bent over
her armful of flowers, "than to make a wager on the life of a rose sent
to a girl who was just coming back to life herself."

"You weren't so gentle with 'Susquehanna,' then, I take it, as you are
with those wild things you have there."

"I was not gentle with her at all." Anne lifted her head with a
mischievously merry look. "If you must know--I kissed her--hard!"

"Ah!" Jordan King sat back, laughing, with suddenly rising colour. "I
thought as much. But I suppose I'm to take it that you did it solely
because she was 'Susquehanna'--not because--"

"Certainly because she was her lovely self, cool and sweet and a
glorious colour, and she reminded me--of other roses I had known.
Flowers to a convalescent are only just a little less reviving than
food. 'Susquehanna' cheered me on toward victory."

"Then she died happy, I'm sure."

He would have enjoyed keeping it up with nonsense of this pleasurable
sort, but as soon as Anne was back in the car she somehow turned him
aside upon quite different ground, just how he could not tell. He found
himself led on to talk about his work, and he could not discover in her
questioning a trace of anything but genuine interest. No man, however
modest about himself, finds it altogether distressing to have to tell a
charming girl some of his more exciting experiences. In the days of his
early apprenticeship King had spent many months with a contracting
engineer of reputation, who was executing a notable piece of work in a
wild and even dangerous country, and the young man's memory was full of
adventures connected with that