In process of time, hardly a brick was to be seen in this old house that had not grown purple with age and become cloaked with moss and ivy. Antiquity looked out from covering to foundation stone. Only the flowers were young, and flowers spring from a remote ancestry. This house, inlaid in solitude, was as quiet as some cloister hidden away within some French forest.
One summer afternoon, the quiet was broken by a group of college girls looking for some new flower for their botanical collection. But so full of youthful spirits were they that they hardly saw the valley lilies with stems so short that they could scarcely bear up their innocent, sweet eyes, distressed, and stare like children in a crowd.
Among these girls was one whom the most casual observer would have singled out from her companions for a beauty rare even in that land of beautiful women. She had wandered off alone and found a sleepy little primrose. As she freed the blossom from its stem and held it in her hand, a tide of thought surged up from her memory and deepened the color of her face. Quietly she dropped down upon the grass and began turning the leaves of her floral diary until she came to a similar flower pressed between its pages.
In a corner was written: “Gathered in the mountains on the 18th of August.”
“How strange,” she thought, “to note how late it was found there, while it blooms so early here.”
Commonplace as that discovery seemed to be, the face so radiant a moment before, became thoughtfully drawn.
She looked at the name “E. Harding” written below the dry, dead blossom, and thought of the time when it had been written, thence back to her first meeting with its owner—one of those happy chances of travel, which have all the charm of the unexpected—as fresh in her memory as though it had been but yesterday. That summer had been one of those idyllic periods which are lived so unconsciously that their beauty is only realized in memories. To become conscious of such charm at the time would be to break the spell which lies in the very ignorance of its existence.
She, this ardent novice in learning, fresh from graduating honors, and full of unmanageable, new emotions did not comprehend that the same youthful impetuosity which had made the two fast friends in so brief a time, had also made it possible for a few heedless words even more quickly to separate them. An older or more experienced woman would have missed the sudden bloom and escaped the no less sudden storm.
“Primroses are his favorite flowers,” she said half aloud, and a dainty little smile lifted ever so slightly the corners of her mouth as if there were pleasure in the thought. Then she took up her pencil and studiously began to jot down the botanical notes concerning the primrose. “Primrose, a biennial herb, from three to six inches tall. The flower is regular, symmetrical and four parted.”
A twig snapped. The girl looked up quickly. “Welcome to my flowers,” said a voice beside her, and a young man smiled frankly, as he bowed and raised his white straw hat.
“Mr. Harding!” she exclaimed, opening her eyes in wonder and staring at him with the prettiest face of astonishment. Alarm had brought color to her cheeks, while the level rays of the sun, which forced her to screen her eyes with one hand, clothed her figure in a broad belt of gold. “How did you happen to be here?”
“I did not happen. Man comes not to his place by accident.”
His answer, though given with a laugh, had a touch of truth.
Through the bright excitement of her eyes, a sudden gleam of archness flashed.
“Have you come to write us up, or rather down?” she asked.
“I have come to help those who won’t help themselves, but first let us make peace, if such a thing be necessary between us. Here is my offering,” and smilingly he laid two fresh white roses in her hand.
She answered his smile with one of her own as she thrust the long generous stems through her waist belt; but she did not thank him with words, and he was glad that she did not. Just as he would have spoken again, a number of girlish voices called in chorus:
“Come, Dorothy, we are going now.”