“But,” remarked Aimée, with discretion, “you had better stand up, Mollie, or you will crush your front breadths."
Mollie, with a saving recollection of front breadths, arose, and as it chanced just in time to turn toward the door as Ralph Gowan came in.
He was looking his best to-night,—that enviable, thorough-bred best, which was the natural result of culture, money, and ease; and Dolly, catching sight of Mollie's guileless blushes, deplored, while she did not wonder at them, understanding her as she did. It was just like the child to blush, feeling herself the centre of observation, but she could not help wishing that her blush had not been quite so quick and sensitive.
But if she had flushed when he entered, she flushed far more when he came to speak to her. He held in his hand a bouquet of flowers,—white camellia buds and bloom, and dark, shadowy green; a whim of his own, he said.
“I heard about the maroon dress,” he added, when he had given it to her, “and my choice of your flowers was guided accordingly. White camellias, worn with maroon sik, are artistic, Mollie, your brother will tell you.”
“They are very pretty,” said Mollie, looking down at them in grateful confusion; “and I am much obliged. Thank you, Mr. Gowan.”
“A great many good wishes go with them,” he said, good-naturedly. “If I were an enchanter, you should never grow any older from this day forward.” And his speech was something more than an idle compliment. There was something touching to him, too, in the fact of the child's leaving her childhood behind her, and confronting so ignorantly the unconscious dawn of a womanhood which might hold so much of the bitterness of knowledge.
But, of course, Mollie did not understand this.
“Why?” she asked him, forgetting her camellias, in her wonder at his fancy.
“Why?” said he. “Because seventeen is such a charming age, Mollie; and it would be well for so many of us if we did not outlive its faith and freshness.”