“I’m just a paid man,” he volunteered. “Nothing very gorgeous about my position.”
“But that’s an advantage,” she said, and smiled in sympathy. “At least, you can leave.”
“True. I never thought of it like that. My principal concern has been to evade leaving; it has loomed so very imminent at times. I say, let’s sit on this stile in the shade of that jolly elm and talk. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
“No,” answered Prudence, who knew that she ought to be at home sewing in the morning-room, knew also that she had not the smallest intention of going back now. “I’m not in any hurry. It’s—pleasant here.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I don’t think I have ever seen prettier country than this. You were gathering primroses?”
“Just a few late ones.” She held the bunch up and surveyed their drooping beauty. “It’s almost a pity; they looked so sweet in the hedge.”
“They look sweeter where they are,” he said quite sincerely, though obviously without sufficient reason for the comparison; the primroses were so unmistakably dying. “Put one in my button-hole, will you? It will recall a pleasant morning.”
She complied without hesitation, laughing when the task was accomplished because the flower drooped its head.
“A bit shy,” he commented. “It is going to raise its face and smile at me when I put it in water, later.”
“Will you really do that?” she asked.