"I forbid you to do that! Do not dare to hurt my cetonias!"
I could not repress a smile, as I answered, "I shall duly obey. I had no right to interfere, as these cetonias do not belong to me."
"I really think that fellow is laughing at us!" said the little one, with arching brows, when the other, who had been watching me for some moments, made some whispered remark, and then the fair head and the dark one were put close together in earnest consultation.
On one of my hands I wore an antique carnelian seal-ring, with my family crest, and a large solitaire, the gift of a grateful patient. These rings, rather unusual upon the finger of a common gardener, had caught the eye of the dark-haired girl, and she could not but notice that my hands and nails were not those of a labourer. For a while they looked shyly at me, while they busied themselves in gathering into their garden hats all the cetonias they could, as if afraid that, after their departure, I should avenge myself by a general onslaught on their protégées. Presently the blonde stepped up to me, and, touching the carnelian on my hand with her finger, she said—
"Are you a nobleman?"
I answered by an anecdote.
"A German journalist had to translate an item on sea-turtles from an English paper. He did not exactly understand what a turtle was; but he know of turtle-doves, which are in German called Turtel-tauben, and, as he did not want to trouble himself to look for the expression in a dictionary, turtle-doves it remained. He wrote of the bird, that it comes out of the sea to the sand of the shore, lays its eggs in that sand, carefully and safely scratching them in, and smoothing the surface with its front paws. These front paws of a turtle-dove perplexed him, and he did what he ought to have done before: he looked in the dictionary and found that the sea-turtle was no dove at all."
"Hem!" said the little one, looking with charming astonishment at the other girl; and then she turned to me again, and, lifting a threatening little finger at me, she said—
"Now, don't you go and betray us to anybody. Promise!"
"You have my knightly word," I said; "parole d'honneur!" But, unable to suppress my mirth any longer, I broke into a ringing laugh, and both girls fled as fast as they could.