like a ghost; an
hour later his face is beaming with a radiance that seems absolutely
to fatten him under your eyes. That was how he looked just then as he
came towards me, smiling in an effulgent sort of way, as if he were
the noonday sun--no less, and carrying a small nosegay in his hand.

When he came within hearing he boasted, as if he had been Caesar
himself.

"I went; I found it. I've got them."

And as he held his hand up, and waved the nosegay--I knew all. He had
been to Mary's Meadow, and the flowers between his fingers were
hose-in-hose.

CHAPTER XII

"I won't be selfish, Mary," Christopher said. "You invented the game,
and you told me about them. You shall have them in water on your
dressing-table; they might get lost in the nursery. Bessy is always
throwing things out. To-morrow I shall go and look for galligaskins."

I was too glad to keep them from Bessy's observation, as well as her
unparalleled powers of destruction, which I knew well. I put them into
a slim glass on my table, and looked stupidly at them, and then out of
the window at Mary's Meadow.

So they had lived--and grown--and settled there--and were now in
bloom. _My_ plants.

Next morning I was sitting, drawing, in the school-room window, when I
saw the Old Squire coming up the drive. There is no mistaking him when
you can see him at all. He is a big, handsome old man, with white
whiskers, and a white hat, and white gaiters, and he generally wears a
light coat, and a flower in his button-hole. The flower he wore this
morning looked like----, but I was angry with myself for thinking of
it, and went on drawing again, as well as I could, for I could not
help wondering why he was coming to our house. Then it struck me he
might have seen Chris trespassing, and he might be coming at last to
lay a formal complaint.

Twenty minutes later James came to tell me that Father wished to see
me in the library, and when I got there, Father was just settling his
eye-glass in his eye, and the Old Squire was standing on the
hearth-rug, with a big piece of paper in his hand. And then I saw that
I was right, and that the flowers in his button-hole were
hose-in-hose.

As I came in he laid down the paper, took the hose-in-hose out of his
button-hole in his left hand, and held out his right hand to me,
saying: "I'm more accustomed to public speaking than to private
speaking, Miss Mary. But----will you be friends with me?"

In Mary's Meadow my head