'Often, since I have learned from you what an exquisite hour the dawn is in Australia.'
'Then, have you not noticed transparent little webs pearled with dew hanging on bushes and tree-trunks?'
'I have occasionally. Why don't you look at me to-day, St. Charity, when you speak to me?'
She attempted to do so in a laughing, careless way; but her glance fell under his, and her fingers trembled as she wreathed a long spray of native clematis with pale-green tendrils and delicate citron-coloured blossoms round the slender stem of a cloisonné vase.
'Well, have you not noticed,' she went on, making her work an excuse for not looking at him, 'how, when something has brushed against these webs, the side touched has curled up in a little blister? That is a blob.'
'Thank you. And do you really feel like one when you are arranging flowers like these?'
'Oh, let us speak in a broad general sense,' she said, laughing.
But, curious to say, he disregarded the suggestion.
'What do you call these white single roses?'
'They are the Macartney. Are they not lovely, with their golden centres and wide cups with "leves well foure paire"?'