"You worked on her sympathies," I said sternly. "You saw she was a warm-hearted young girl, and you played up to her. You made yourself out a hero, you rascal."
"You're the keen gentleman," said Barney admiringly. "Sure and you'd make a good priest, saving your good looks, for you'd see the confession in the heart before a poor lying penitent had time to think of a saving twist to give it that might look like the truth and save him a penance."
"Never mind me and my remarkable qualities," I said severely. "What were you telling that girl?"
Barney bent over his flowers to shift the shades which protected them from the sun, but after a moment's hesitation he answered, without looking up.
"She has the way with her, that bit! When she looked me in the eye and says 'Tell me what I ask,' I knew my commanding officer, and it's not Barney that risks a court-martial for disobedience! No, sir! If she didn't keep at me to tell her how I lost my leg, now! Your honor couldn't have held out agin her, not to be the man you are."
I knew the story of that lost leg, and how shy Barney was of retailing that heroic bit of his history, and I wondered less at the girl's emotion than at her success in drawing the hidden tale from him. He didn't tell it to many. While I marvelled he looked up with the twinkle I couldn't help liking.
"She didn't give me time to tell her that that bit story wasn't the kind you pay to hear, but it would maybe have chilled the warm heart of her to have me push her silver back, and I wouldn't do that even if I had to keep the money to save her feelin's, the darlin'."
"Awfully hard on you, I know," I said, letting us both down with the help of a little irony. "Where's my rosebud, you rascal?"
He lifted a slender vase from the covered box beneath his table and brought out the flower he had reserved for me. It was a creamy white bud, deepening into a richer shade that hinted at stores of gold at the sealed-up heart. As he held it out silently, something in his whimsical face told me his thought.
"Yes, you are right," I said casually, as I took the flower. "It does look like her."