‘One of us must go out and see William, that’s all,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ll go if you like, and chance the Wil-cat. No; we can’t all go. People notice you so much more if there’s a lot of you.’
Thus William at work in the harness-room was visited by a small figure in a damp mackintosh and a red tam-o’-shanter frosted with raindrops.
‘Where is he?’ it whispered, ‘and has he had his breakfast?’
‘Now you be off, Miss,’ said William, very loud and plain. ‘I ain’t up to talking so early. My jaws is hung crooked with talking so much yesterday. Be off with you.’ As he spoke he pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote on the table:
‘Come at 12,’ and smeared it out with his cuff, just as the gardener came to the door and said:
‘Don’t look like clearing up.’
Caroline understood.
‘We shall be wanting some flowers,’ she said, ‘to send in a letter. And it’s too wet to go and get them. I thought perhaps William would.’
‘Flowers ain’t William’s business, nor yet his pleasure,’ said the gardener, ‘or he wouldn’t ’ave a dead un in his button-hole like what he’s got.’ He pointed to William’s coat, hanging on a saddle-perch and still bearing in its button-hole the withered rose of secrecy.
‘Perhaps you would, then?’ Caroline suggested. ‘I want four red roses, no—five, and ten buds. And is there any stephanotis? I think it means absent friends.’