Poor Betty!  “I’m a damned little coward,” she said, as she bolted into the house.  The brave, foolish words rang in my ears all that night.  In the early morning I wondered what I should do.  A commonplace message, written or telephoned, would be inept.  I shrank from touching her, although I knew she would feel my touch to be gentle.  You have seen, I hope, that Betty was dearer to me than anyone else in the world, and I knew that, apart from the stirring emotions in her own young life, Betty held me in the closest affection.  When she needed me, she would fly the signal.  Of that I felt assured.  Still...

While I was in this state of perplexity, Marigold came in to rouse me and get me ready for the day.

“I’ve taken the liberty, sir,” said he, “to telephone to Telford Lodge to enquire after Mrs. Connor.  The maid said she had Mrs. Connor’s instructions to reply that she was quite well.”

The good, admirable fellow!  I thanked him.  While I was shaving, he said in his usual wooden way: 

“Begging your pardon, sir, I thought you might like to send Mrs. Connor a few flowers, so I took upon myself to cut some roses, first thing this morning, with the dew on them.”

Of course I cut myself and the blood flowed profusely.

“Why the dickens do you spring things like that on people while they’re shaving?” I cried.

“Very sorry, sir,” said he, solicitous with sponge and towel.

“All the same, Marigold,” said I, “you’ve solved a puzzle that has kept me awake since early dawn.  We’ll go out as soon as I’m dressed and we’ll send her every rose in the garden.”

I have an acre or so of garden behind the house of which I have not yet spoken, save incidentally—­for it was there that just a year ago poor Althea Fenimore ate her giant strawberries on the last afternoon of her young life; and a cross-grained old misanthropist, called Timbs, attends to it and lavishes on the flowers the love which, owing, I suspect, to blighted early affection, he denies to mankind.  I am very fond of my garden and am especially interested in my roses.  Do you know an exquisitely pink rose—­the only true pink—­named Mrs. George Norwood? ...  I bring myself up with a jerk.  I am not writing a book on roses.  When the war is over perhaps I shall devote my old age to telling you what I feel and know and think about them....

I had a battle with Timbs.  Timbs was about sixty.  He had shaggy, bushy eyebrows over hard little eyes, a shaggy grey beard, and a long, clean-shaven, obstinate upper lip.  Stick him in an ill-fitting frock coat and an antiquated silk hat, and he would be the stage model of a Scottish Elder.  As a matter of fact he was Hampshire born and a devout Roman Catholic.  But he was as crabbed an old wretch as you can please.  He flatly refused to execute my order.  I dismissed him on the spot.  He countered with the statement that he was an old man who had served me faithfully for many years.  I bade him go on serving me faithfully and not be a damned fool.  The roses were to be cut.  If he didn’t cut them, Marigold would.