It would be a good
plan to cut a few at once before they were spoilt by the heat. He took
his knife out of his pocket and hesitated where to begin, for he never
liked to cut his roses; but, remembering that Priscilla would insist on
having some indoors, he set to work on the tree nearest him, and
tenderly detached a full-blown Baroness Rothschild. He stood and looked
at it complacently.

"I don't believe," he said to himself, "that Chelwood, with all his
gardeners, will ever come up to my roses. There's nothing like personal
attention. Roses are like children--they want individual, personal
attention. And they pay for it. Children don't always do that."

At this very moment, and just as he was turning to another tree, a
little chuckling laugh fell on his ear. It was such a strange sound in
the stillness of the garden, and it seemed so close to him, that he
started violently and dropped his knife. Where did it come from? He
looked vaguely up in the sky, and down on the earth--there was nothing
living to be seen, not even a bird. "I must have been mistaken," he
thought, "but it's very odd; I never heard anything more clearly in my
life." He picked up his knife, and moved further along the turf walk, a
good deal disturbed and rather nervous. At the end of it there was a
rustic sort of shed, which had once been an arbour, but was now only
used for gardening tools, baskets, and rubbish: over the entrance hung a
mass of white climbing roses. Walking slowly towards this, and cutting
a rose or two on his way, Mr Vallance was soon again alarmed by the
same noise--a low laugh of satisfaction; this time it came so distinctly
from within the shed, that he quickened his pace at once and, holding
back the dangling branches, looked in with a half feeling of dread.
What he saw there so astonished him that he stood motionless for some
moments, as though struck by some sight of horror. On the floor was a
large wooden marketing basket, and in this, wrapped in an old shawl, lay
a little child of two years old. She had bright yellow hair, and a
brown skin, and in her fat hands she held a queer little shoe with brass
nails in it and brass clasps; she was making small murmuring sounds to
herself, and chuckling now and then in perfect contentment. Mr
Vallance stared at her in great perplexity; here was a puzzling thing!
Where did the child come from, and who had left it there? Whoever it
was must come and take it away at once