Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/40

 “I know the names of none of the flowers,” he said.

She looked up into his face and said timidly, “Is it worldly and wrong of me to have loved the flowers? Ought I to have thought more of those higher things that are unseen?”

His heart smote him. He could not answer her simplicity.

“Surely the flowers are good, and did not you gather this posy for me?” she pleaded. “But if you do not love them, I must not. And I will try to forget their names. For I must try to be like you in all things.”

“Love the flowers always,” he said. “And teach me to love them.”

So she told him all about the flowers, how some grew very slowly and others bloomed in a night; how clever the convolvulus was at climbing, and how shy violets were, and why honeycups had folded petals. She told him of the birds, too, that sang in the wood, how she knew them all by their voices. “That is a chaffinch singing. Listen!” she said. And she tried to imitate its note, that her lover might remember. All the birds, according to her, were good, except the cuckoo, and whenever she heard him sing she would stop her ears, lest she should