o the palest.
There were roses too, and 'boy's love,' mignonette, stocks, and pinks.

"Oh, they are sweet!" exclaimed Bella, as she drew in great breaths of
their fragrance. "I am sure I should want to buy them if I saw any one
else selling them."

"Come on," said Tom impatiently; he could not see that it mattered much
how the bunches were arranged.

They strolled slowly on again, Bella feeling very conscious now, and very
shy. She was wondering how she must begin. Must she go up to people and
stop them, and ask them to buy her flowers?

Tom was so taken up with watching a sheepdog guiding a flock through the
busy street, he forgot all about his duties as a salesman.

"Do stand still a minute and watch," he pleaded, and Bella stood.

How long they had stood she never knew, when she was suddenly recalled to
the present, and her duty, by a voice saying, "What a perfectly lovely
show of flowers! and, oh, the scent!" and looking quickly round, she found
two ladies standing beside her gazing at her basket.

"Are they for sale?" asked one of the ladies, looking at Bella with a
pleasant smile.

"Oh yes, ma'am, miss, I mean," stammered poor, shy Bella, and, to hide her
blushing cheeks, she bent and lifted out some of her flowers that the
ladies might see them better.

"How much a bunch are they?"

"Tuppence each the big ones, ma'am, and a penny the little ones,"
stammered Bella. She longed to give them to the lady, and ask her not to
pay any money at all for them. "Some are all shades of one colour, and
some are mixed."

"It is wonderful," she heard one lady say softly to the other. "I gave a
shilling in London a day or two ago for a much smaller bunch than this."

"Where do you get such beautiful flowers?" she asked, turning again to
Bella with her pleasant smile.

"I grow them myself, ma'am," said Bella, with shy pride.

"Do you really? Well, you must be a born gardener, I am sure, and you
deserve to get on. Mary,"--turning to her companion again,--"I will
have pink sweet-peas of different shades for the dinner-table to-night,
and then that point will be settled and off my mind. Nothing could be
prettier. Can you,"--to Bella--"give me six bunches of pink ones?
At least four of pink, and two of white?"

Bella turned over her store eagerly, and found the number wanted.

"I must have some of your mignonette," said the other lady, "for the sake
of the smell, and a bunch of those roses too. How much e