me--
(_Chuckling._) To see her on her knees decorating the little legs of
the couch with frills as if it were a child! But it was her sterling
qualities that impressed me presently.

PHOEBE. And did--did I amuse you also?

VALENTINE. Prodigiously, Miss Phoebe. Those other ladies, they were
always scolding you, your youthfulness shocked them. I believe they
thought you dashing.

PHOEBE (_nervously_). I have sometimes feared that I was perhaps too
dashing.

VALENTINE (_laughing at this_). You delicious Miss Phoebe. You were
too quiet. I felt sorry that one so sweet and young should live so
grey a life. I wondered whether I could put any little pleasures into
it.

PHOEBE. The picnics? It was very good of you.

VALENTINE. That was only how it began, for soon I knew that it was I
who got the pleasures and you who gave them. You have been to me, Miss
Phoebe, like a quiet, old-fashioned garden full of the flowers that
Englishmen love best because they have known them longest: the daisy,
that stands for innocence, and the hyacinth for constancy, and the
modest violet and the rose. When I am far away, ma'am, I shall often
think of Miss Phoebe's pretty soul, which is her garden, and shut my
eyes and walk in it.

(_She is smiling gallantly through her pain when_ MISS SUSAN _returns._)

MISS SUSAN. Have you--is it--you seem so calm, Phoebe.

PHOEBE (_pressing her sister's hand warningly and imploringly_).
Susan, what Mr. Brown is so obliging as to inform us of is not what we
expected--not that at all. My dear, he is the gentleman who has
enlisted, and he came to tell us that and to say good-bye.

MISS SUSAN. Going away?

PHOEBE. Yes, dear.

VALENTINE. Am I not the ideal recruit, ma'am: a man without a wife or
a mother or a sweetheart?

MISS SUSAN. No sweetheart?

VALENTINE. Have you one for me, Miss Susan?

PHOEBE (_hastily, lest her sister's face should betray the truth_).
Susan, we shall have to tell him now. You dreadful man, you will laugh
and say it is just like Quality Street. But indeed since I met you
to-day and you told me you had something to communicate we have been
puzzling what it could be, and we concluded that you were going to be
married.

VALENTINE. Ha! ha! ha! Was that it.

PHOEBE. So like women, you know. We thought we perhaps knew her.
(_Glancing at the wedding-gown._) We were even discussing what we
should wear at the wedding.

VALENTINE. Ha! ha! I shall