'Would she?' asked Wogan. ''Faith, my friend, you'll have to go to school again. Your ignorance of the ways of women is purely miraculous. She does not look this way, therefore she does not know you are here! She looks to every other quarter; observe, she stops and gazes at nothing with the keenest absorption, but she will not look this way. Oh, indeed, indeed, my simple logician, she does not know you are here. Again she comes on--in this direction, you'll observe, but how carelessly, as though her pretty feet knew nothing of the path they take. See, she stops at the dial. Mark how earnestly she bends over it. There's a great deal to observe in a dial. One might think it was a clock and, like herself, had stopped. There's a peach tree she's coming to. A peach tree in blossom. I'll wager you she'll find something very strange in those blossoms to delay her. There, she lifts them, smells them--there's a fine perfume in peach blossoms--she peers into them, holds them away, holds them near. One might fancy they are the first peach blossoms that ever blossomed in the world. Now she comes on again just as carelessly, but perhaps the carelessness is a thought too careful, eh? However, she does not look this way. Watch for her surprise, my friend, when she can't but see you. She will be startled, positively startled. Oh, she does not know you are here.'
The girl walked to the steps, mounted them, her face rose above the level of the wall.
'Oh,' she cried, 'Mr. Kelly!' in an extremity of astonishment. Wogan burst out into a laugh.
'What is it?' asked Rose.
'Sure, Mr. Kelly will tell you,' said Wogan, and he strolled to the end of the walk, turned, walked down the steps and so left them together.
'What was it amused Mr. Wogan?' asked Rose of Kelly as soon as Wogan had vanished. The Parson left the question unanswered. He balanced himself on one foot for a bit then on the other, and he began at the end, as many a man has done before.
'I can bring you nothing but myself,' said he, 'and to be sure myself has battered about the world until it's not worth sweeping out of your window.'
'Then I won't,' said she with a laugh. The laugh trembled a little, and she looked out over the river and the fields of Provence with eyes which matched the morning.
'You won't!' he repeated, and then blundered on in a voice of intense commiseration. 'My dear, I know you love me.'
It was not precisely what Rose expected to hear, and she turned towards the Parson with a look of pride. 'And of course I love you too,' he said lamely.