"Could any one doubt it?" cried Gilbert, with enthusiasm. "Who was the Jo——" (he was on the brink of saying "Johnny") "g—gentleman of whom it was said: 'If you want to see his monument, look around'—Sir Christopher Wren, wasn't it? Well, I looked around as I came up the street!"
And Gilbert took in the whole front of the manse with his glance. It certainly was very pretty, covered from top to bottom with rambler roses and Virginia cress.
Gilbert entered, and as they passed in front of the minister's study door Miss Girnigo almost skittishly made a sign for silence, and Gilbert tip-toed past with an exaggeration of caution which made his companion laugh. They found themselves presently in the drawing-room, where again the flower-pots were everywhere, but specially banked round the oriel window. Gilbert named them one after the other like children at a baptism, with a sort of easy certainty and familiarity. His friend the nurseryman's clerk had not failed him. Miss Girnigo was delighted.
"Well," she said, "it is pleasant to have some one who knows Ceterach Officinarum from a kail-stock. We shall go botanising together!"
"Ye-es," said Gilbert, a little uncertainly, and with less enthusiasm than might have been expected.
"Good heavens," he was saying, "how shall I grind up the beastly thing if I have to live up to all this?"
But Miss Girnigo was in high good-humour, though her pleasure was sadly marred by the incipient cold in her head, which she was conscious prevented her from doing herself justice. At forty, eyes that water and a nose tipped with pink do not make for maiden beauty.
"I have a dreadful cold coming on, Mr. Denholm," she said; "I really am not fit to be seen. I wonder what I was thinking of to ask you in!"
"Try this," said Gilbert, pulling a kind of india-rubber puff-ball out of his pocket; "it is quite good. It makes you sneeze like the very—ahem—like anything. Stops a cold in no time—won't be happy till you get it!"
"I don't dare to—how does it work?" demurred Miss Girnigo.