Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/231

Rh The brothers laughed with a vague sensation that it was not impossible she might disturb them very much indeed some day.

They both watched her as they talked with her father in the dingy sitting-room. For the first time it struck them how old and faded everything was in it. The contrast between the dull wall-paper, the worn carpet, the stiff-backed, common-place chairs, and the bright graceful moving bit of sunshine of a girl was so great.

Hugh went to her side impulsively.

"Do you know what you are like?" he said. "A lovely bunch of red and white roses, fresh from the morning, and set in our old dark, dusty room."

The girl blushed. "And the thorns," she said. "They are there, too."

"The right protection of every rose from the rough hand that would snatch her. A rose must be gently wooed and tenderly removed from the parent stem." He laughed, and looked at her father.

"I forgot you write poetry—at least, I have heard you do," the girl said, looking up at him. "Of course you see fairies, and banshees, and things."