“There would still be law,” suggested Morson, pleasantly. “So cheer up, Beau, there's something left for you to learn.”
Then, as they passed Uplands, they turned, with a single impulse, and cantered up the broad drive to the portico. Betty and Virginia were in the library; and as they heard the horses, they came running to the window and threw it open.
“So you will come back in the summer--all of you,” said Virginia, hopefully, and as she leaned out a white camellia fell from her bosom to the snow beneath. In an instant Jack Morson was off his horse and the flower was in his hand. “We'll bring back all that we take away,” he answered gallantly, his fair boyish face as red as Virginia's.
Dan could have kicked him for the words, but he merely said savagely, “Have you left your pocket handkerchief?” and turned Prince Rupert toward the road. When he looked back from beneath the silver poplars, the girls were still standing at the open window, the cold wind flushing their cheeks and blowing the brown hair and the red together.
Virginia was the first to turn away. “Come in, you'll take cold,” she said, going to the fire. “Peggy Harrison never goes out when the wind blows, you know, she says it's dreadful for the complexion. Once when she had to come back from town on a March day, she told me she wore six green veils. I wonder if that's the way she keeps her lovely colour?”
“Well, I wouldn't be Peggy Harrison,” returned Betty, gayly, and she added in the same tone, “so Mr. Morson got your camellia, after all, didn't he?”
“Oh, he begged so hard with his eyes,” answered Virginia. “He had seen me give Dan a white rose on Christmas Eve, you know, and he said it wasn't fair to be so unfair.”
“You gave Dan a white rose?” repeated Betty, slowly. Her face was pale, but she was smiling brightly.
Virginia's soft little laugh pealed out. “And it was your rose, too, darling,” she said, nestling to Betty like a child. “You dropped it on the stair and I picked it up. I was just going to take it to you because it looked so lovely in your hair, when Dan came along and he would have it, whether or no. But you don't mind, do you, just a little bit of white rosebud?” She put up her hand and stroked her sister's cheek. “Men are so silly, aren't they?” she added with a sigh.