"Are there any hotel accommodations?"
"Oh, yes! at the station."
"Then I think I will remain; for my visit isn't half finished, and I am not satisfied to end it here."
Charlie was delighted.
After that they went up to the flower-room. It seemed to improve every day, and was quite a nest of sweets.
"So Miss Charlie hasn't all the family genius," said Mr. Darol. "It is not every one who can make flowers grow under difficulties."
"They were nipped a little about the middle of the month. One night my fire went out."
"And it blighted the flowers he meant to cut in a few days," explained Charlie, "so that at first there did not seem a prospect of a very merry Christmas."
And Charlie slipped her hand within Mr. Darol's, continuing, in a whisper, "I can never tell you how glad I was to have the money. It was like the good fortune in a fairy story."
He looked at the beaming, blushing face with its dewy eyes. Ah! he little guessed, the day he first inspected Charlie Kenneth's drawings, that all this pleasure was to arise from a deed of almost Quixotic kindness.