‘Don’t!’ Caroline implored; ‘because really we can’t, you know.’
‘Well, I must be getting along,’ said William, rising stiffly; ‘I ain’t talked so much since the election. And I wasn’t a-going to say what you thought I was a-going to say. What I was a-going to say was, get out of this. It’s all trampled, and some one’s sure to notice—if it’s only that Jim. You go deeper into the wood, and come night-time I’ll fetch him away and bed him down all right. So long!’
He tramped away, crunching sticks and stalks as he went.
‘How glorious,’ Charlotte said slowly, ‘to have a real live heroine for your sister.’
‘Yes, but,’ Charles asked anxiously, ‘are you sure William will keep the secret?’
‘I’d answer for him with my life,’ said Rupert. ‘You don’t know how jolly he was when he brought me the bread and cheese, and water in a medicine bottle. It tasted a little of camphor. Awfully decent chap he is!’
‘He can’t help keeping the secret,’ Caroline spoke with impressive earnestness; ‘he wears the Royal Rose and the twin buds, the badge of secrecy. If you wear that you simply can’t betray a secret. It says so in the Language Of, page 37.’
She picked up the book from under the roses, fluttered its leaves, found page 37 and read:
‘“The red or damask rose, full-blown and worn with two of its own buds, is the emblem and pledge of inviolet”—inviolable, I mean—“secrecy, and he who wears the Royal Queen of flowers accompanied by two unopened promises of her future magnificence, by this eloquent symbol binds himself to preserve uncontaminated the secret trust reposed in him by the more delicate and fragile portion—fragile and delicate as the lovely flower which is the subject of our remarks—of the human race.”’