“Perhaps I can help you?” said a voice almost overhead.
He looked up into the amused brown eyes of the girl.
The person whose self-possession fails him miserably at ordinary junctures may rise superior at a soul-disturbing crisis. Burton, red-faced, perspiring, conscious of the sorry figure he presented, arose from his hands and knees with brilliant composure. A glistening drop was tickling the side of his nose, yet he inclined his head politely towards the pickets; innumerable other drops were creeping disturbingly down the middle of his back, yet he smiled almost blandly.
“Thank you, if you will be so kind,” he said, and held forth his hand.
She bent gracefully and picked up the spray. Then,--
“I fear they are rather wilted,” she said with polite regret. “There are fresher ones on your side of the fence, are there not?”
Her accent was delicious, Burton thought; soft, creamy,--like her cheeks,--filled with odd little drawls and slurs. He hoped she would go on. But she didn’t; she only paused and looked questioningly from the withered spray of roses to his face. Her expression was merely one of courteous indifference, of polite interest tinctured with reserve; yet in the farther depths of her brown eyes a little imp of mischief danced into sight and out again.
“The roses on my side are charmingly fresh,” responded Burton, “but the fact is I have a desire for that especial spray.”
“Perhaps because stolen fruit is sweetest?” she asked maliciously.
“Not altogether for that reason,” he smiled. “There are certain associations connected with it that endear it.”
“Indeed?” She held it gingerly by the extreme tip of the stem and reached towards the fence. He accepted it gravely and thanked her.
“Please don’t,” she said; “I’m not sure that I am not compounding a felony.”
“I’m convinced that you are needlessly alarmed,” he answered. “You have only presented me with what was yours to give.”
But she shook her head. “Oh, no, not at all! I discovered you stealing”--this with awful emphasis--“my roses, and I came to your aid merely because I feared that if I did not you would have a sunstroke.”
“Stealing is an unpleasant word,” he said tentatively. “Couldn’t you substitute borrowing?”
“Borrowing?” The brown eyes opened very wide. “But I don’t believe it would be true.”