If Mr. Kitely had any reply ready for this remark, which I doubt, Mr. Fuller did not give him time to make it, for he walked at once into the room, and found Mattie sitting alone in a half twilight, for the day was cloudy. Even the birds were oppressed, for not one of them was singing. A thrush hopped drearily about under his load of speckles, and a rose-ringed paroquet, with a very red nose, looked ashamed of the quantity of port-wine he had drunk. The child was reading the same little old book mentioned before. She laid it down, and rose from the window-sill to meet Mr. Fuller.
"Well, how do you do, sir?" she said. "I am glad you are come."
Any other child of her age Mr. Fuller would have kissed, but there was something about Mattie that made him feel it an unfit proceeding. He shook hands with her and offered her a white camellia.
"Thank you, sir," said Mattie, and laid the little transfiguration upon the table.
"Don't you like flowers?" asked Mr. Fuller, somewhat disappointed. "Isn't it beautiful now?"
"Well, where's the good?" answered and asked Mattie, as if she had been a Scotchwoman. "It will be ugly before to-morrow."
"Oh, no; not if you put it in water directly."
"Will it live forever, then?" asked Mattie.
"No, only a few days."
"Well, where's the odds, then? To-morrow or next week—where's the difference? It looks dead now when you know it's dying."