"Your pet rose-tree? But perhaps it will recover yet."
He raised it carefully, while she stood looking on.
"It is not much broken, after all. I will plant it again; and with plenty of support and shade, I think it will do."
Lucia flew to bring her spade. She held the tree, while Maurice carefully arranged its roots and piled the earth about them; the scattered leaves were picked up from the bed, and a kind of tent made with matting over the invalid; at last she found time to say,
"But how did you happen to come just at the right moment?"
"I saw you from my window. I noticed that you were very busy for awhile, and when you stopped working and sat down in that disconsolate attitude, I guessed some terrible misfortune must have happened. So I came."
Lucia looked at him gravely, a little troubled.
"I never saw anybody like you," she said; "you seem always to know when one is in a dilemma."
Maurice laughed.
"If all dilemmas were like this, I might easily get up a character for being a sort of Providence; but come and show me what else there is to do."