“What a wealth of bloom!” said Sara, bending toward a loaded branch.
“ ‘La Sylphide,’ like other sylphs, is at her best when only half opened,” said John, selecting with careful deliberation a perfect rose just quivering between bud and blossom, and offering it to Sara.
“No; I prefer this one,” she answered, turning aside to pluck a passée flower that fell to petals in her hand. An hour later I saw the perfect rose in Iris Carew’s hair.
“Niece Martha,” said Aunt Diana energetically, appearing in my room immediately after breakfast, “I do not approve of this division of our party; it is not what we planned.”
“What can I do, aunt? Sara ought not to pay hotel prices—”
“I am not speaking of Miss St. John; she can stay here if she pleases, of course, but you must come to us.”
“Sara might not like to be left alone, aunt. To be sure,” I continued, not without a grain of malice, “Mr. Hoffman is here, so she need not, he too lonely, but—”
“John Hoffman here?”
“Yes; we came here at his recommendation.”
Aunt Di bit her lips in high vexation; next to Mokes she prized John, who, although a person of most refractory and fatiguing ways, was yet possessed of undoubted Knickerbocker antecedents. She meditated a moment.