nfusion. 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.

'What do you want these for?' Wilson asked.

'I want them,' she said. She wished servants did not ask questions.

'Ay, you've said as much. But what do you want them for, for
decoration, or to send away, or what?'

'I want them for a presentation bouquet.'

'A presentation bouquet! Who's coming then?--the Duchess of Portland?'

'No.'

'Oh, not her? Well you'll have a rare poppy-show if you put all the
things you've mentioned into your bouquet.'

'Yes, I want a rare poppy-show.'

'You do! Then there's no more to be said.'

The next day Winifred, in a dress of silvery velvet, and holding a
gaudy bunch of flowers in her hand, waited with keen impatience in the
schoolroom, looking down the drive for Gudrun's arrival. It was a wet
morning. Under her nose was the strange fragrance of hot-house flowers,
the bunch was like a little fire to her, she seemed to have a strange
new fire in her heart. This slight sense of romance stirred her like an
intoxicant.

At last she saw Gudrun coming, and she ran downstairs to warn her
father and Gerald. They, laughing at her anxiety and gravity, came with
her into the hall. The man-servant came hastening to the door, and
there he was, relieving Gudrun of her umbrella, and then of her
raincoat. The welcoming party hung back till t