dancing-men terribly, you know. Promise me you'll dance."
"Oh," said Charlotte Benson, "he has promised me." Mr. Langenau bowed
low; he got wonderfully through these awkward situations. As he left the
room Kilian said in a tone loud enough for us, but not for him, to hear,
"The Lowders have a nice young gardener; hadn't we better send to see if
he can't come this evening?"
"Kilian, that's going a little too far," said Richard in a displeased
manner; "as long as the boys' tutor conducts himself like a gentleman,
he deserves to be treated like a gentleman."
"Ah, Paterfamilias, thank you. Yes, I'll think of it," and Kilian
proposed that we should leave the table, as we all seemed to have
appeased our appetites and nothing but civil war could come of staying
any longer.
It was understood we had not much time to dress: but when I came
down-stairs, none of the others had appeared. Richard met me in the
hall: he had been rather stern to me all day, but his manner quite
softened as he stood beside me under the hall-lamp. That was the result
of my lovely white mull, with its mint of Valenciennes.
"You haven't any flowers," he said. Heavens! who'd have thought he'd
ever have spoken in such a tone again, after the cup of tea I poured out
for the tutor. "Let's go and see if we can't find some in these vases
that are fit, for I suppose the garden's robbed."
"Yes," I said, following him, quite pleased. For I could not bear to
have him angry with me. I was really fond of him, dear, old Richard; and
I looked so happy that I have no doubt he thought more of it than he
ought. He pulled all the pretty vases in the parlor to pieces:
(Charlotte and Henrietta and his sister had arranged them with such
care!) and made me a bouquet of ferns, and tea-roses, and lovely, lovely
heliotrope. I begged him to stop, but he went on till the flowers were
all arranged and tied together, and no one came down-stairs till the
spoilage was complete.
All this time Mr. Langenau was in the library--restless, pretending to
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