Mr. Albert Andrews was a young man, according to Roseborough time, being now in his forty-second year; and he was a widower. Although he was not rich he was fairly “comfortable.” He was not brilliant, but his character was exemplary. If he was somewhat deliberate—one need not say pompous—of utterance, this was altogether becoming in a gentleman who had twice been elected tax collector, and, once, president of the Orphans’ Fund Board. He was not handsome, but Roseborough ladies considered him “personable”—just as they had considered Hibbert Mearely distinguÉ and as they did consider Judge Giffen imposing, Wilton Howard magnetic, and Dr. Frei “so foreign and so elegant.” In height, width, weight, colouring, and expression, he was medium; on the top of his head he was less than that, because his hair there was thin, but he devoted careful attention to it and, as yet, the shining, pinky surface, lurking amid the tan-coloured strands, was screened. His eyes were prominently set, pale and placid. He had been “alone” for six years; but, during the last two, he had been slowly coming to a momentous decision. In fact, he had already arrived at it. He had decided to propose to Hibbert Mearely’s widow.

With this canny and romantic aim in view, he had recently visited a millinery and tub frocks shop in Trenton, kept by a woman who owed his mother for favours bestowed on her in poorer days, and had allowed her to settle the score, so to speak, by informing him as to the etiquette involved.

“It’s all but four years sence the departed did so,” Mrs. Bunny had said, after ponderous consideration, “and you say her perferred raiment seems to be of a palish hue with black ribbons? That’s lavender, an’ no question ’tall about it. I’d say, Mr. Albert, after a’most a lifetime of expeer’ence in dressin’ the genteel sets, that—so long as the black ribbons indures—silence must be your potion. (It is conceivable that she meant “portion.”) Even if she was to put on white or lavender streamers, you couldn’t pop the question, but only hint, an’ trim your subtile speech with looks an’ gestures. If she was to step out afore you in colours, it would be good ettikay to fall on your knees an’ offer your name an’ pertection. (Of course,” she amended parenthetically, “your name ain’t nothing to the Mearely name; an’ I don’t know how much pertection you’d be ekal to in a pinch—you never havin’ played no basketball, nor nothing but whist—but there’s no requiremints to tell her so.) So long as she’s got a speck of mournin’ onto her, do it rev’rence an’ utter no ardint word. Bestow on her sighs an’ looks of yearnin’; an’ you can converse, offhand, concernin’ wedded love an’ flowers that never fadeth, an’ the moon, an’ all such sent’mints—an’”—she wound up, impressively—“hover, Mr. Albert, hover.”

This last bit of advice he had obeyed as consistently as was possible to a man by nature meek and unobtrusive—he had hovered. He had, also, in a measure, overcome his temperamental reserve through the private practice of amorous facial expression in the mirror after shaving.

Mr. Albert Andrews, like the majority of his sex, was practically colour-blind. He knew black and white, red, yellow, blue, and green in their violent tints. A cobalt blue, for instance, a mustard yellow or a bright bottle-green, he could immediately identify. Other shades, such as tan, champagne, lilac-bud, lavender, mauve, cadet and alice blues, pale pinks, straw-yellows, and delicate grass-stain and reseda greens, he called gray. He knew gray also to be a colour; because he himself—as well as other Roseborough gentlemen of quality, who were nicely apparelled—favoured it in summer.

“Gray,” he had answered unhesitatingly in response to Mrs. Bunny’s question as to what Mrs. Mearely was wearing; “Gray with a dark pattern in it, and black ribbons.” Her expert knowledge immediately translated this correctly. “Not gray, Mr. Albert; lavender.”

“Ah!” with heavy facetiousness, “when ladies wear it they call it lavender? The sentimental dears! So that is lavender. Well. Well.”

Mrs. Bunny had thereupon led him to the ribbon counter and endeavoured to teach him to distinguish between pastels.

“For,” said she, “Mrs. Mearely, being that kind of a brownish blonde, an’ not pure goldin nor yet flaxin, she’ll not take to loud shades. An’, Mr. Albert, if you don’t know a pale turkoy blue, nor a silver green nor a fawn, from a lavender, how’ll you know if the time’s come to cease your dumb yearnin’ and bust out?”

Earnestly seeking to profit by Mrs. Bunny’s instructions, he had carefully scanned, several times daily, the little ribbon and chiffon samples she had snipped from the reels and labelled for him. Even without them in his hand, he believed he should feel a degree of confidence if he were to encounter his charmer without her black streamers and decked in a “pastel.”

He looked up now and saw her—a sight for rapture, even to the eyes of an unimaginative widower of forty-two, and indeterminate as to colours. He saw that the customary dark garniture was not there. He saw the white lace bodice and sleeves, the blushing, radiant face, the rosy lips, humming softly and mellifluously. He saw the silk folds of shoulder-drape and girdle, where the sun cast a silvery sheen over the material’s hue.

What was that hue? Poor man: his heart leaped and fell before the dooming fact that his mind—forgetful of its recent culture in this subject—had automatically registered the word, “gray.” To find his intellect immediately correcting its stumbling with “lavender” was no consolation. Here, seemingly, was his great opportunity; it was calling to him, throwing coquettish flowerets, and chanting: “I am waiting for you”—yet, alas, he knew not whether the tint of that sun-silvered, silken girdle enjoined upon him a silence to “do it rev’rence” or coyly urged him to “bust out.”

Drops of moisture stood upon his brow, his hands became clammy, as he drew the pony up to the wall of Villa Rose garden. Mutely he invoked the spirit of Mrs. Bunny.

“Mrs. Mearely!”

“Yes,” she laughed back at him, cheerily. “Wasn’t that a lucky shot? It hit you, didn’t it?”

“Mrs. Mearely!” (What was that colour?)

“You’d better put your hat on again, to shade your eyes from the sun,” she cautioned, for Mr. Albert Andrews’s pale, prominent optics were almost popping out of their sockets. “Mrs. Mearely!” (Surely that tint was blue? Now that she turned, and her body shadowed it from the sun’s rays, it certainly looked as blue as Mrs. Bunny’s inch of baby ribbon.)

“I want to ask all sorts of favours of you, Mr. Andrews.” She paused, with her pretty head perked on one side. It was her fashion to request favours with this little flirt and smile which suggested, with guileless conceit, that to serve any one so beautiful and so young was payment enough and to spare for any man in Roseborough. Little did she remember at this moment, however, the results of that same perking from her father’s farm gate, when Hibbert Mearely had asked her to tell him if he had, or had not, taken the wrong turning at the bridge.

“Mrs. Mearely!” (He would dare to believe it blue. He would act as if it were blue!)

“What on earth is the matter with the poor man? He’ll be as red as a beanflower in a minute,” ran through her mind. Aloud she said: “I know you are making your collecting rounds and you will pass Dr. Wells’s and Mr. Howard’s and also Judge Giffen’s. Will you deliver a message at each house for me?”

A gulp was the only reply, for a second or two. It meant that Mr. Andrews was done with “dumb yearnin’.” (The dress was, unquestionably, blue.)

“Mrs. Mearely! I beg you to listen to what I am about to say.” The words tumbled out pell-mell, now that he knew blue for what it was; in Mrs. Bunny’s phrase, they “bust out.” “I will take any message of yours, every message, wherever and whither you may send it. I shall be honoured—nay, more, pleased.”

Surely she could not mistake such ardour! he had declared himself, and as a man of honour, would stand by this avowal. He waited breathlessly for her answer.

“Splendid!” She clapped her hands. “Then you shall ask the Wellses and the Judge and Wilton to come for cards this evening. Mrs. Witherby and her daughter and niece are coming; and Mrs. Lee, who has some news for us all. You will come, of course, won’t you? I am relying on you.”

(She was relying on him—in blue!)

“Mrs. Mearely!”

“Well, then, say that you will,” she prompted, inwardly provoked by what she regarded as a stupid man’s more than usually dense mood, and remembering that it would be wise to peep into the oven to see how Dom Paradis’s “goodlie hearte’s” cake was behaving in a modern cook stove.

He removed his hat again. He spoke solemnly.

“I will,” he said—even as he had said it, thirteen years ago, at St. Jephtha’s altar.

“Thank you ever so much, Mr. Andrews. Now I must run along in....” “Mrs. Mearely!”

“Yes? Were you about to say something?”

(Was he about to say something? She was leading him on—in blue!)

“Mrs. Mearely! I have said it. Mrs. Mearely, did you understand the purport of what I said to you just now?”

“What did you say to me just now, Mr. Andrews?”

Such smiles leaning to him over the low wall; such large blue eyes, flecked and changing from grave to gay; and behind and about this entrancing jewel of a woman her opulent setting of the Villa Rose estate! He grew dizzy. Her dress was blue; and she was eager to hear him repeat the declaration he had already made to her! This could mean only one thing, he was convinced. She had observed his devotion and secretly coveted him. She had noticed that he hovered and had approved his brooding flutter. In short, she had donned that blue satin to allure him; and had hung her charms upon the wall, that morning, because she well knew he must pass by.

Mr. Albert Andrews was the average, simple, masculine creature, making up for other deficiencies by an excellent conceit of himself. The tradition of his sex—that woman is the pursuer, because she recognizes the superiority of the male and wishes to entrap a specimen of the wonderful species for her glory—comprised the major part of Mr. Andrews’s knowledge of the feminine. He had not learned more during his marriage, because his satisfied opacity was proof against all attempts to instruct.

It was to him wholly natural that Rosamond Mearely—being, for all her beauty and wealth, only a woman after all and therefore an inferior—should have decided to entrain him; because, forsooth, he was a man. He did not see how she could have chosen better in all Roseborough.

Literally he rose to do that which was demanded of him; for he stood up in his cart and laid hold of the wall with both hands. By standing on tiptoe he could just reach the ledge near where her two finely turned arms rested.

“Goodness me!” she exclaimed with a trace of the Poplars Farm in her accents. “Suppose your horse walks off and leaves you hanging to my wall like—like a tom-cod in a fish market?”

He interrupted her.

“Mrs. Mearely! I said just now that I would carry any message of yours wherever and whither you desire. I said even more. I said that I would be pleased to do so. I meant it. I mean it still. Mrs. Mearely! Can I tell you—may I tell you....” He gulped. “Mrs. Mearely I have long—Mrs. Mearely! I have often thought over the little sentiments I might one day express to you. That is to say, when I should see you again as I see you now, that is to say, without the black-edged habiliments of woe....”

“Oh, my frock? I see. You are going to pay me compliments.”

(She was asking him to pay her compliments! She was making it easy for him!)

He beamed at her—the eager, engaging young creature, so artful, yet artless, too—the pursuing feminine.

“I have considered, in a poetical way, what I would say if I saw you first in something—er—green. Some little phrase about the grass and verdant innocence. Or, in pink. I had that thoroughly outlined, too; because we thought, Mrs. Bunny and I, that the likeliest hue would be a pastel pink.”

Her fair white forehead puckered; her perfect eyebrows lifted.

“Mrs. Bunny? Pastel pink?” She sought enlightenment.

“One moment. I would then have likened you to a rose and a sea-shell, both chaste similes and very pretty conceits. But now I can say to you, that you are most fair in this colour since it is the colour of the sky, therefore—may we not say?—(I think we may) the colour of heaven—and of my birthstone, the aquamarine, and, ah!—the colour of your eyes.” “What?” She was startled.

“Blue sky—that is to say, blue heavens—blue birthstone, blue dress, blue eyes; gown and eyes a perfect match....”

“Mercy! I hope not,” she burst out laughing, “Whatever makes you think this frock is blue? Or do my eyes look like lavender to you?”

Mr. Andrews’s rather loose under jaw slipped down, the smiles of rapt satisfaction faded. Slowly he turned a purplish red that passed off in a chill.

“Mrs. Mearely,” he asked hoarsely. “Did you say that gown is l—lavender?”

She shrieked joyously. Then, taking pity on his plainly revealed agony of mind, tried to control her laughter.

“Yes. At least, it is lilac; but they are much alike. Lavender, lilac....”

“Stop!” he gasped.

“Mauve, heliotrope,” she tipped them off merrily on her digits. “Amethyst.” She crooked her little finger.

“Don’t,” he groaned.

“Wood-violet.” She waggled the thumb of her other hand.

“Lavender!” He sank back into the seat of the cart like a stone into the sea.

“Or lilac. But it doesn’t match my eyes, Mr. Andrews; no, really, I haven’t lavender eyes.” She found his error too entertaining and, ceasing her kind attempt at gravity, she bubbled gaily.

“Lavender,” he muttered. He thought with gruelling shame of how he had “bust out,” and added: “I have been indelicate.”

“Oh, why take it so seriously?” she giggled. “I’m not offended. I’m—I’m—laughing.”

He could hear that she was!—but the ripples of her mirth fell balmless upon his wound. His sober, orderly, plodding mind was in a perilous whirl. She had not lured him; she had not been waiting for him, as the desirous feminine awaiteth the superior being. Tradition itself, the perfect tradition of the sexes, was exploding like firecrackers in the little hisses and snickers that went off just above his humbled head. He doubted that he would be able even to “hover” in silence—with his wonted dignity and optimism—for some time to come.

“Lavender,” he repeated. He gathered up the reins, hardly knowing that he did so, and motioned the stocky pony away from the vine-clad walls of Mockery’s citadel.

“Don’t forget to give my messages,” she called after him. “Cards at Villa Rose this evening. Don’t be later than seven.”

He might still be muttering “Lavender” as he went on his way; but there was just one colour, at that moment, of which Mr. Albert Andrews was positive, and that colour was gray. All the world was gray, drab-gray.

Rosamond ran into the house to examine Dom Paradis’s cake, but, while she poked a sprig from the broom into its dough, she was still pondering Mr. Andrews’s odd behaviour.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed as she found to be satisfactory what the end of the bent straw revealed. “Rosamond, dear, do you suppose that dubby thing was making love to you? Is that what will happen to you, Rosamond, now that you have put off the last black ribbon? Haven’t you seen it coming? Proposals from the stupid men and gossip from the catty women, till they make you marry somebody—somebody old! Rosamond, dear, you simply must go in search of that irredeemably bourgeois lover this afternoon. And you have no time to lose.”

However, she refused to be downcast. There would still be six hours of sun in this day—even if His Friggets came back to-morrow.

She was so busy in the kitchen and pantry that she did not hear one o’clock ring from the tower bell at twenty minutes past the hour. The toll-man, being full of years and midday dinner, had fallen asleep immediately after tucking away his meal. On awaking he decided, very sensibly, to ignore the occurrence, and to ring the hour as usual, no matter what the time might be.