"And one's virtues, too, behind one's back. Never fear her loyalty, Mr. Nevitt." Phil had insisted everyone should drop his military cognomen. "You should have heard her solicitude when no word came from you, and was there not some joy in her face when you appeared that could not have put itself into words?" cried Allin Wharton eagerly, for he always resented the least suspicion of a non-perfection in Primrose.
"Now I will cross thee off my books," blushing and trying to look stern. "Allin Wharton! To betray a friend in that manner!"
"To recount her virtues," and Betty Mason laughed over to the pretty child. "She has a right to be like an April day."
"And I found this pretty conceit in some reading," interposed Vane. "We should have tried our pens in your behalf, Mistress Primrose, but I knew nothing of this birthday except just as we met, so I can only offer second-hand, but then 'tis by a famous fellow:
"'May never was the month of love,
For May is full of flowers,—
But rather April wet by kind,
For love is full of showers.'"
"Am I such a crying girl?" Primrose's face was a study in its struggle not to smile.
"And here is another." Andrew Henry half turned:
"'When April nods, with lightsome smiles
And Violets all a-flower;
Her willful mood may turn to tears
Full twice within an hour.'"
"Then I am very fickle—and bad tempered, and—and——" There was deep despair in the voice.
"And Primrose, an April girl who can have whatever mood she chooses," said Wharton. "I wish I had known one was to bring posies of thought and I would have looked up one. How I envy those people who can write acrostics or sudden verses, and all I know seem to have gone from me."