“I am not a visitor here. I saw the gate open and came in. I couldn’t help it.”
It was a small matter to her new friend whether she were a visitor at the great house or not.
“You ken a flower when you see it,” said he, “and that’s more than can be said of some of the visitors here.”
He led the way round the garden till they came to a summer-house covered with a flowering vine, which was like nothing ever Rose had seen before.
“It was just like what a bower ought to be,” she told Graeme, afterwards. “It was just like a lady’s bower in a book.”
There was a little mound before it, upon which and in the borders close by grew a great many flowers. Not rare flowers, such as she had just been admiring, but flowers sweet and common, pansies and thyme, sweet peas and mignonette. It was Miss Elphinstone’s own bower, the gardener said, and these were her favourite flowers. Rose bent over a pale little blossom near the path—
“What is this?” asked she; and then she was sorry, fearing to have it spoiled by some long unpronounceable name.
“Surely you have seen that—and you from Scotland? That’s a gowan.”
“A gowan!” She was on her knees beside it in a moment. “Is it the real gowan, ‘that glints on bank and brae’? No, I never saw one; at least I don’t remember. I was only a child when I came away. Oh! how Graeme would like to see them. And I must tell Janet. A real gowan! ‘Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower’—you mind? And here is a white one, ‘With silver crest and golden eye.’ Oh! if Graeme could only see them! Give me just one for my sister who is ill. She has gathered them on the braes at home.”
“Ahem! I don’t know,” said her friend, in a changed voice. “These are Miss Elphinstone’s own flowers. I wouldna just like to meddle with them. But you can ask her yourself.”