Professor Marmion, would you have the goodness to ask one of the young ladies to bring me one of those beautiful white roses of yours ?" Franklin Marmion was on the point of saying: "I'll bring you one myself, and see what you can do with it," but he was a sportsman in his way, and, seeing that his guests were so far not all inclined to be frightened at what they had seen, he refrained from spoiling the "entertainment," as they evidently took it to be, and so he asked his daughter to go and get one of her nicest Marechal Niels.
She rose from her chair and went to her favourite tree; Merrill followed her with a ready penknife.

They came back with a fine half-blown rose on a leafy twig about nine inches long.

As she held it out to Phadrig he declined it with a bow and a wave of his hand, saying: "I thank you, Miss Marmion, but it will be better for me not to touch it.

Some one might think that I had bewitched it in some way; will you be kind enough to give it to Commander Merrill and ask him to put the stem into the turf: about two inches down, please." She handed the rose to Merrill, and as he took it their eyes met for an instant, and she flushed ever so slightly.

He, with many unspoken thoughts, knelt down, made a little hole in the turf with his knife, and planted the rose.