"There is a shell," said Lois, putting one into his hand. "I think that is pretty, and it certainly is odd. And what do you say to those white violets, Mr. Caruthers? And here is some very beautiful pimpernel—and here is a flower that I do not know at all,—and the rest is what you would call rubbish," she finished with a smile, so charming that Tom could not see the violets for dazzled eyes.
"Show me the flowers, Tom," his mother demanded; and she kept him by her, answering her questions and remarks about them; while Julia asked where they could be found.
"I find them in quite a good many places," said Lois; "and every time it is a sort of surprise. I gathered only a few; I do not like to take them away from their places; they are best there."
She said a word or two to Mrs. Wishart, and passed on into the house.
"That's the girl," Julia said in a low voice to her lover, walking off to the other end of the verandah with him.
"Tom might do worse," was the reply.
"George! How can you say so? A girl who doesn't know common English!"
"She might go to school," suggested Lenox.
"To school! At her age! And then, think of her associations, and her ignorance of everything a lady should be and should know. O you men! I have no patience with you. See a face you like, and you lose your wits at once, the best of you. I wonder you ever fancied me!"
"Tastes are unaccountable," the young man returned, with a lover-like smile.