"You think you have found something that looks just like me?" asked the girl, slowly, ignoring the latter half of his speech. Her face was full of deprecating interest. She daintily drew forth a single strange blossom, and held it, poised for contrast, against the dark leaves of the fern. Thus detached, it bore an unfortunate resemblance to a ghostly spider.
"Oh, not stuck off on a cork, like that!" cried the tortured donor. "All in a lump, don't you know,—beaten up like the whites of eggs, with gold-dust sprinkled over, and parsley around the edges!"
"All in a lump—beaten up like eggs—parsley around the edges," began Gwendolen, gravely, when suddenly she tripped and fell against her own laughter. Her pretty shoulders quaked. She bent far over for control, and tried to hide the treacherous mirth.
But Dodge had seen enough for him. "By Jiminy! you've been jollying me all the time! And I swallowed it like a bloomin' oyster!" He came around to the front, drew up a stool, flung himself upon it, and looked up with grins that bespoke a renewed zest for life. "Now honest, Miss Todd, you owe me something for this. Didn't you know who sent them? Didn't you really find that card in the box?"
"No, I didn't—honest—but—m-mother did!" confessed Gwendolen, now half-stifled with laughter.
"And you didn't resent it? And you thought them pretty from the very first moment?" cried the youth, on a high note of satisfaction. He reached up now boldly, took the single flower from her hand, pinched off the end of a long fern-leaf to back it, and deliberately arranged himself a button-hole.
Gwendolen wiped the tears of merriment from her bright eyes. "Pretty?" she echoed. "It is too tame a word. I thought them a dream,—an inspiration,—a visual ecstasy!"
"Yes, I said they were like you," returned the impudent Dodge, as well as he could for the distorted countenance bent above the process of pinning in his flower. "There," he said, anent this finished operation, "it's in. I think it becomes me. I didn't run my finger to the bone but once. Now tell me what ma-ma thought of the flowers and the card?"
In spite of her usual self-possession, the girl was stricken dumb. To add to her confusion, a deep embarrassing blush rose relentlessly to her throat and face, and would not be banished.
"You won't repeat it!" cried the terrible youth. "You don't dare to,—but I will. Mama said,—lifting her lorgnettes (here he deliberately mimicked the air of a middle-aged grande dame),—'T. Caraway Dodge! Who is T. Caraway Dodge? Oh, I see,—a snip of an attaché!'"