She had thanked Ulrich Stölle for it, in a pleasantly worded note. She had not dared express her full appreciation, lest she seem fulsome. Few men in her experience had sent her flowers. Never in all the years of her good friendship with Bruce McKenzie had he bestowed upon her a single bloom.
Several days had passed, and there had been no answer to the note. She had not really expected an answer, but she had thought he might come in.
He came in now, with a great parcel in his arms. He was a picturesque figure in an enveloping cape and a soft hat pulled down over his gray hair, and with white flakes powdered over his shoulders.
"Good morning, Miss Bridges," he said; "did you think I was never coming?"
His manner of assuming that she had expected him quite took Emily's breath away. "I am glad you came," she said, simply. "It is rather dreary, with the snow, and this morning I found my cyclamen frozen on the shelf."
He glanced up at it. "We have other flowers," he said, and, with a sure sense of the dramatic effect, untied the string of his parcel.
Then there was revealed to Miss Emily's astonished eyes not the flowers that she had expected, but four small plush elephants, duplicates in everything but size of the one she had loaned to Ulrich, and each elephant carried on his back a fragrant load of violets cunningly kept fresh by a glass tube hidden in his trappings.
"There," said Ulrich Stölle, "my father sent them. It is his taste, not mine—but I knew that you would understand."
"But," Miss Emily gasped, "did he make them?"
"Most certainly. With his clever old fingers—and he will make as many more as you wish."