Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/23

 Harriet, and Harriet flushed slightly. "For the people next door," concluded the offerer.

"Somers—S-O-M-E-R-S." Harriet spelled it out.

"Oh, Somers!" exclaimed the neighbour woman, with a gawky little jerk, like a schoolgirl. "Mr and Mrs Somers," she reiterated, with a little laugh.

"That's it," said Harriet.

"I saw you come yesterday, and I wondered—we hadn't heard the name of who was coming." She was still rather gawky and school-girlish in her manner, half shy, half brusque.

"No, I suppose not," said Harriet, wondering why the girl didn't tell her own name now.

"That's your husband who has the motor-bike?" said Harriet.

"Yes, that's right. That's him. That's my husband, Jack, Mr Callcott."

"Mr Callcott, oh!" said Harriet, as if she were mentally abstracted trying to spell the word.

Somers, in the little passage inside his house, heard all this with inward curses. "That's done it!" he groaned to himself. He'd got neighbours now.

And sure enough, in a few minutes came Harriet's gushing cries of joy and admiration: "Oh, how lovely! how marvellous! but can they really be dahlias? I've never seen such dahlias! they're really too beautiful! But you shouldn't give them me, you shouldn't."

"Why not?" cried Mrs Callcott in delight.

"So many. And isn't it a pity to cut them?" This, rather wistfully, to the masculine silence of Jack.

"Oh no, they want cutting as they come, or the blooms gets smaller," said Jack, masculine and benevolent.

"And scent!—they have scent!" cried Harriet, sniffing at her velvety bouquet.

"They have a little—not much though. Flowers don't have much scent in Australia," deprecated Mrs Callcott.

"Oh, I must show them to my husband," cried Harriet, half starting from the fence. Then she lifted up her voice:

"Lovat!" she called. "Lovat! You must come. Come here! Come and see! Lovat!"

"What?"