Mrs. Dallas, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a
long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise
effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again
in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or
twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned.
When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening
apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for
layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled
shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to
work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her
chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot
and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the
tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the
heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a
new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert
and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile,
her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though
unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It
had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now
hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But “It might be the
making of him,” Mrs. Dallas thought.
[Illustration: decorative bar]