"I fancied they were spring flowers," said the aeronaut in a stage-aside. "So I can go scot-free until July. I must marry her before then."
Colonel Currie was on the point of launching well out into his favourite waters—in which case the Providence of so fatuous a trifler as Reginald Hampton must surely have deserted him—when a certain peculiarity in his guest's face arrested his attention. He gazed fixedly at him for a few moments, then frowned ominously.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but you have the family nose. I have never seen that peculiar dent in the middle in any but a Currie nose. Is it possible—"
"I also beg your pardon, Colonel," responded the balloonist, following a sudden inspiration; "but before answering your question, may I ask if you are really as devoted to flowers as you seem to be?"
"I am indeed. They are the passion of my life," said Colonel Currie, still gazing perplexedly at his companion's nasal hallmark.
"For my part, I can never forgive a florist—a true florist—who can find it in his heart to put other—other considerations first. If a man told me that he possessed a blue dahlia, for instance, I would go and see that man in the teeth of gatling guns."
"So would I. Grape-shot is a matter of no consequence by comparison."
"If the man had relations in the house whom it made my head ache to meet, I would still go. Nothing in the world, sir, ought to stand in the way of a blue dahlia."
"Nothing," responded the Colonel, forgetting everything else in a sudden fervour of sympathetic enthusiasm.
"You are quite convinced of that?"