He tossed aside the pen, placed his hands behind his head, and blew smoke-rings up into the branches. A little wind crept in gustily from the street and fluttered the papers on the table. Burton took his cigarette from his mouth and pursed his lips.
“How did it go?” he muttered, striving to recall and re-render the air that the girl had been humming. But his memory failed him and he gave up the attempt. A stronger breeze caught up the paper upon which he had written and blew it to the grass beside the fence. He watched it lazily as it turned over and over until caught by the iron pickets. Presently, he told himself, he would rescue it. Then his gaze, travelling beyond, caught sight of a cluster of scarlet roses lying upon the path just inside the fence. He glanced rapidly, stealthily, towards the Castle. There was no one in sight. His roaming eyes fell upon his cane. The next moment he had seized it and was thrusting it between the pickets of the fence, squatting most ungracefully with the mid-morning sun beating remorselessly down upon his back.
The cane was long enough for his purpose and its crooked handle seemed fashioned for just such an emergency. But the low branches of a rose-bush were between him and the prize, and every time he tried to drag the latter towards the fence they interposed and foiled him. The leaves of the Daphne-tree rustled in the gathering breeze and murmured “Thief! Thief!” At his side a sheet of paper escaped from the pickets and, all unseen, bounded merrily into the Enchanted Garden. Burton’s face grew redder and redder and the sun seemed resolved on burning his back through the light shirt. The perspiration gathered on his forehead and slipped down his straight, long nose in little drops that tickled excruciatingly. Again and again the cluster of roses was almost within reach of his outstretched brown hand, and again and again the faithful branches whipped it back. Burton paused, wiped the drops from his face, viewed the somewhat bedraggled bunch of flowers exasperatedly, and summed up the situation mildly and satisfactorily in a clearly enunciated and temper-relieving “Damn!”
Then he poked the cane again through the pickets and past the branches. And then,—
[“Perhaps I can help you?” said a voice almost overhead.]
He looked up into the amused brown eyes of the girl.
