"Is your sweet lady out yet, pretty Barbara?" inquired Robin Hays of Barbara Iverk, as he met her in the flower-garden of Cecil Place, when it was nearly midday.
"My poor lady is, I am sure, very ill; or, what is still worse, ill at ease," replied the maiden. "She has not been in bed all night, I know, for the couch was undisturbed this morning, so I just came here to gather her some flowers: fresh flowers must always do one good, and I think I never saw so many in bloom so early."
"Barbara, did you ever hear tell of a country they call the East?"
"A country!" repeated Barbara, whose knowledge of geography was somewhat more extensive than that of Robin, although she had not travelled so much, "I believe there are many countries in the East."
"Well, I dare say there may be. Mistress Barbara: you are going to chop scholarship with me; but yet, I suppose, you do not know that they have in that country a new way of making love. It is not new to them, though it is new to us."
"Why, suppose they wished you, a young pretty maiden as you are, to understand that I, a small deformed dragon, regarded you, only a little, like the beginning of love, they would—" Robin stooped as he spoke, and plucked a rose-bud that had anticipated summer—"they would give you this bud. But, suppose they wanted you to believe I loved you very much indeed, they would choose you out a full-blown rose. Barbara, I cannot find a full-blown rose; but I do not love you the less for that."
"Give me the bud, Robin, whether or no; it is the first of the season:—my lady will be delighted with it—if, indeed, any thing can delight her!"
"I will give it you to keep; not to give away, even to your lady. Ah, Barbara! if I had any thing worth giving, you would not refuse it."
"And can any thing be better worth giving, or having, than sweet flowers?" said the simple girl. "Only it pains me to pull them—they die so soon—and then, every leaf that falls away from them, looks like a reproach!"