Mr. Bell gave a prolonged whistle. "Excuse me. I thought you were Mrs. Something-or-other for sure. Aren't you mistress here?"
"Oh, no. My brother's wife is the mistress here. I'm only Jessamine."
She laughed again. She was holding the roses against her face, and her eyes sparkled over them roguishly. The vegetable-man looked at her admiringly.
"You're a country rose yourself, miss, and you ought to be blooming out in the fields, instead of wilting in here."
"I wish I was. Thank you so much for the roses, Mr. —— Mr. ——"
"Bell—Andrew Bell, that's my name. I live out at Pine Pastures. We're all Bells out there—can't throw a stone without hitting one. Glad you like the roses."
After that the vegetable-man brought Jessamine a bouquet every trip. Now it was a big bunch of field-daisies or golden buttercups, now a green glory of spicy ferns, now a cluster of old-fashioned garden flowers.
"They keep life in me," Jessamine told him.
They were great friends by this time. True, she knew little about him but she felt instinctively that he was manly and kind-hearted.
One day when he came Jessamine met him almost gleefully. "No, nothing today. There is no dinner to cook."