"Yes, but we're very apt to get the failures. The fellows their folks
give five or six hundred pounds to and tell them they're not expected
back till they're making a living. The best men find their level
somewhere else, along recognized channels. Lord knows we don't want
them--this country's for immigrants. We're manufacturing our own
gentlemen quite fast enough for the demand."

"I should think we were! Why, Lorne, Canadians--nice Canadians are just
as gentlemanly as they can be! They'll compare with anybody. Perhaps
Americans have got more style:" she weighed the matter; "but Canadians
are much better form, I think. But, Lorne, how perfectly dear of you to
send me those roses. I wore them, and nobody there had such beauties.
All the girls wanted to know where I got them, but I only told Lily,
just to make her feel a pig for not having asked you--my very greatest
friend! She just about apologized--told me she wanted to ask about
twenty more people, but her mother wouldn't let her. They've lost an
uncle or something lately, and if it hadn't been for Clara Sims staying
with them they wouldn't have been giving anything."

"I'll try to survive not having been asked. But I'm glad you wore the
roses, Dora."

"I dropped one, and Phil Carter wanted to keep it. He's so silly!"

"Did you--did you let him keep it?"

"Lorne Murchison! Do you think I'd let any man keep a rose I'd been
wearing?"

He looked at her, suddenly emboldened. "I don't know about roses, Dora,
but pansies--those are awfully nice ones in your dress. I'm very fond
of pansies; couldn't you spare me one? I wouldn't ask for a rose, but a
pansy--"

His eyes were more ardent than what he found to say. Beneath them Dora
grew delicately pink. The pansies drooped a little; she put her slender
fingers under one, and lifted its petals.

"It's too faded for your buttonhole," she said.

"It needn't stay in my buttonhole. I know lots of other places!" he
begged.

Dora considered the pansy again, then she pulled it slowly out, and the
young man got up and went over to her, proffering the lapel of his coat.

"It spoils the bunch," she said prettily. "If I give you this you will
have to give me something to take its place."

"I will," said Lorne.

"I know it will be something better," said Dora, and there was a little
effort in her composure. "You send people such beautiful flowers,
Lorne."

She rose beside him as she spoke, graceful and fair, to fasten it i