sire to
test the courage of his companion. She had just scrambled up a grassy
slope near him, and had seen that the flower was out of reach. As he
prepared to approach it, she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing
was impossible! Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved,
enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes,
what became of him. He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he
was perfectly indifferent to her suffering.

"I can get the flower," he called to her. "Will you trust me?"

"I don't want it; I would rather not have it!" she cried.

"Will you trust me?" he repeated, looking at her.

She looked at him and then at the flower; he wondered whether she would
shriek and swoon, as Miss Light had done. "I wish it were something
better!" she said simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to
clamber. Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise
was difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow
foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize.
He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to
descend. There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he evaded
them all. It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and
that was all he had proposed to himself. He was red in the face when
he offered Miss Garland the flower, and she was visibly pale. She had
watched him without moving. All this had passed without the knowledge
of Mrs. Hudson, who was dozing beneath the hood of the carriage. Mary
Garland's eyes did not perhaps display that ardent admiration which
was formerly conferred by the queen of beauty at a tournament; but they
expressed something in which Rowland found his reward. "Why did you do
that?" she asked, gravely.

He hesitated. He felt that it was physically possible to say, "Because
I love you!" but that it was not morally possible. He lowered his pitch
and answered, simply, "Because I wanted to do something for you."

"Suppose you had fallen," said Miss Garland.

"I believed I would not fall. And you believed it, I think."

"I believed nothing. I simply trusted you, as you asked me."

"Quod erat demonstrandum!" cried Rowland. "I think you know Latin."

When our four friends were established in what I have called their
grassy valley, there was a good deal of scrambling over slopes both
grassy and stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges, a
great ma