Peter Dillon stood looking out at the river, whistling softly, "Kathleen Mavourneen." It was the song Barbara had first heard him whistle in the drawing-room of Mr. Hamlin's house. The young man said nothing, for a few moments, even when he and Bab were alone. But when Bab came over toward him, Peter smiled. He had his hat off and he had run his hands through his dark auburn hair.
"I say, Miss Thurston, why can't you make up your mind to like me?" he questioned. "Surely you don't suspect me of dark designs, do you? You American people are so strange. Just because I am half a Russian you think I have some sinister purpose in my mind. I am not an anarchist, and I don't want to go about trampling on the poor. I wish you could meet the Russian ambassador. He is about the most splendid-looking man you ever saw. I know him, well, you see, because my mother was a distant cousin of his."
Barbara laughed good-humoredly. "You seem to be a kind of connecting link between three or four nations—Russia, America, China. What are your real duties at your legation?"
Barbara looked at her companion with a real question in her brown eyes—a question she truly desired to have answered. She was interested to know what duties an attaché performed for his embassy. Peter, in spite of his frivolities, claimed to be a hard worker.
"You have not seen the loveliest part of Mt. Vernon yet, Miss Thurston," Peter Dillon interposed just at this instant. "I want to show you the old garden, and we must hurry before the gates are closed. Yes; I know I did not answer your question. An attaché just makes himself generally useful to his chief. But if you really want to know what my ambition is, and how I work to achieve it, why some day I will tell you." Peter looked at Bab so seriously that she answered quickly:
"Yes, I should dearly love to see the garden."
Bab and Peter Dillon wandered together through the paths formed by the box hedges planted in Martha Washington's garden more than a century ago.
Neither seemed to feel like talking. The young man had seen the gardener as they entered the enclosure, and had persuaded him to allow them to go through the lovely spot alone.
Bab's vivid imagination brought to life the old colonial ladies who had once wandered in this famous garden. She saw their white wigs, their powder and patches and full skirts. So Bab forgot all about her companion.
Suddenly she heard Peter give a slight exclamation. They had both come to the end of the garden walk. There before them stood a great rose tree. Blooming in the unusually warm sunshine were two rose-buds, gently tipped with frost.