"Who did you think I was when you first woke?" I asked, taking my pipe and preparing to be comfortable.
He pushed back his hair. "Benjamin," he answered vaguely. He was still half asleep.
"But you told me your name was Benjamin!" I put down my flint and tinder.
He met my look. "I have a cousin Benjamin, as well," he rejoined. "I was dreaming of him. Monsieur, I am humiliated to think that I went to sleep. I have never done so before."
My pipe drew well, and I did not feel like chiding. "It does not matter," I said, with a yawn. "You must not take it amiss, monsieur, if I confess that, as a guard, I have never considered you much more seriously than I would that brown thrush above you. What is your posy?" and I leaned over and took the flowers from his hand.
He smiled at me drowsily. "The arbutus," he explained, with a lingering touch of his finger upon the blossoms. "Smell them, monsieur. I found them in Connecticut last spring. Are they not well suited to be the first flowers of this wild land? Repellent without,—see how rough the leaves are to your finger,—but fragrant and beautiful under its harsh coating. Life in the Colonies grew to seem to me much the same."
I turned the flowers over, and considered his philosophy. "You are less cynical than your wont, monsieur." I reflected. "May I say that I like it better in you? Cynicism is a court exotic. It should not grow under these pines."
He put out his hand to brush a twig from my doublet. "Cynicism is often the flower of bitterness. Monsieur, you have been very good to me. I cannot keep in mind my constant bitterness against life when I think of the thoughtfulness and justice you have shown me."
I jerked away. "Sufficient! Sufficient! Let us be comfortable," I expostulated, and I turned my back, and gave myself to my pipe and silence.
The birds sang softly as if wearied, and the earth was warm to the hand. I held the flowers in my fingers, and they smelled, somehow, like the roses on our terrace at home on moonlight evenings when I had been young and thought myself in love. I watched a drift of white butterflies hang over an opening red blossom. Such moments pay for hours of famine. It disturbed me to have the Englishman rise and go away.