“Oh! you know quite well for what. What should I have done, if it had not been for you and Harry? I mean if you had not let me come to your house sometimes.”
“Stuff!” said Harry.
“Truth!” said Charlie. “I never shall forget the misery of my first months, till Harry came into our office. It has been quite different since the night he brought me to your house, and you were so kind as to ask me to come again.”
“That was no great self-denial on our part,” said Graeme, smiling.
“You minded Graeme on some one she used to know long ago,” said Rose. “And, besides, you are from Scotland.”
Both lads laughed.
“And Graeme feels a motherly interest in all Scottish laddies, however unworthy they may be,” said Harry.
And so they rambled on about many things, till they came to the gate of Mr Elphinstone’s garden, beyond which Arthur and Will were loitering.
“How pretty the garden is!” said Rose. “Look, Graeme, at that little girl in the window. I wonder whether the flowers give her as much pleasure, as they used to give me.”
“I am afraid she does not get so many of them as you used to get,” said Graeme.