“These are the canisters where I keep my raw stuff,” he said, pointing to the tin canisters ranged on shelves. They stood hand in hand reading the names on the labels.
“Ambergris—that’s the name of a scent I bottle,” she said, with a little laugh. “I use a lavender ribbon for that. And orris—that’s the powder. Don’t they have queer names? Opoponax, that always makes me laugh.”
They laughed together over opoponax.
“And there’s names out of Scripture,” she said, “frankincense and myrrh.”
He took down the tin of benzoin, and made her smell it, shaking some of the brittle stuff into the palm of her hand; crumbling up her hand into a cup, and guiding it now to her nose and now to his own. They compared their tastes; “I think this sort smells nicest,” she said to him, gravely holding out her cupped hand, but he would not agree, after bending over it with the deliberation of a practised critic, and added a little storax, which, he said, brought out the pungency of the benzoin.
“All these gums and resins,” he said, “come from trees; you cut a gash in the tree, and the gum comes from it like blood from a wound, oozing out. And one of them—labdanum—is got by the natives by beating the bush with long whips; or sometimes they get it by combing the beards of the goats which have been browsing off the bush.”
That made her laugh too, but she was impressed by his knowledge, and that made him laugh in his turn.
“Now I’ll show you the woods,—you said you liked the sandal-wood; well; this is cedar, don’t you like that even better? Shall I give you some to take away in a little packet? you can keep it with your clothes, like the sachets you tie up downstairs.” He thought with a momentary panic that he might have offended her by referring to her clothes, but the hint of intimacy in the suggestion pleased and troubled him so much that he was glad he had taken the risk for the sake of that pleasure.
She was not offended; she only blushed a little.
“That will be nice,—but I’m taking all your time, Mr. Morgan.”