GOLDEN FLOWER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19416, 26 August 1926, Page 14

GOLDEN FLOWER.

(A NEW ZEALAND ROMANCE.) ' (COPTRIGHT).

BY DULCE CARMAN (Mrs. D. Drummond).

CHAPTER XlX.—(Continued.) Sunshine hugged her treasure closer. "They are both the dearest, loveliest dollies in the world," she said. 0h! ~~ what a lot of presents Santa Claus brought you, Dawn! " "He always does! " said the mite, complacently,- "Last yearllhad g up a pillow-case to hold them a , this time mummy said one of her stockings would be big enough the fairies had given us a Wonder Tre already, and she didn't want Santa Caus to think that I was a greedy little girl. " But he didn't manage to get everything into her stocking after all. Dems said, his eyes wandering to the dainty Dink tea-set on the chair by the bedside, and the beautiful doll on the, pillow. "There is writing on the tea-set. the small girl announced. I cant read writing. (( ~ •« i can " Sunshine offered. If it is very plain." . „ . , , "What does it say? Denis asked interestedly. . , The writing was very plain painstakingly plain—and Sunshine managed to read it without difficulty at all. . " For Dawn and Sunshine and Denis. To use when they have parties in the garden, or in the bush. "Why! It is for all of us! How lovely!" chanted Dawn. Oh! Isn the a lovely Santa Claus?" " Good gracious! Whatever is the meaning of this so early in the morning?" demanded Bride's voice behind them, and the three absorbed children turned to see Bride and Flower standing together in the doorway. " Mummy is still asleep!" Bride went on. "I don't want you monkeys to wake her. See! I will dress Dawn, and then you can all run out in the sunshine with your new treasures. I never saw such lucky children in my life." Years afterwards, looking back, Sunshine used to remember that Christmas Day as the first perfect day of her life. The beautiful clothes she wore gave her a new sense of well-being that tinged each slightest happening with rose-col-our. Ailsa and Flower were unanimously sure that the fairies must have bewitched her. Rosemary, when she woke, gathered the little girl close in her arms, and whispered to her that she was the loveliest thing imaginable —the spirit of Christmas itself. It was quite enough to turn any child's head, but Sunshine had been so long repressed, so starved of all tenderness, that it only added an intoxicating spice to her happiness. The Hawk himself, when he rode over later in the day, had little to say about the change in the small girl's appearance, but he looked at her often, and took advantage of a moment alone with Ailsa to murmur into her ear.

" If that is tho effect your marriage with Jim Dene is going to have, Ailsa, I am doubly glad that it has happened so. I never in my life saw such a transformation." " I never dreamed that so complete a transformation was possible!" the girl confessed. " And really it was Flower's idea in the first place, Brain—not altogether mine." "Miss Gerard is a wonderful girl!" the young man said gravely. " She seems to make a huge success of anything she undertakes." " Rosemary seems to be very fond of her!" Ailsa said, a little abruptly. • " So are Bride and Dawn —the child worships her just as Shirley and Denis do."

"Everybody does!" Ailsa countered, with a slight laugh. "Even .Tim! He is quite as fond of Clirysanthe as he is of me—only it is a different kind of fondness. I wish she could marry someone really worthy of her." . . "It would be hard to find that. >-I have, a very high opinion of Miss Gerard. She has been kindness itself to me and mine," said Brain gravely. "Ah ! Here comes Rosemary. Ailsa—l believe she will know you soon." Ailsa turned eagerly toward, the advancing figure, but Rosemary met her with the same gay greeting that she had become accustomed to.

" Good-morning—and merry Christmas! Am I not disgracefully lazy? You must blame Bride, though. I lay awake nearly all night, and, of course, went to sleep just when I ought to have been thinking of getting' up." " Another bad night!" said Brian, a little reproachfully. " Oh, Rosemary—you promised me " • Rosemary threw out her pretty hands quickly, in a little apologetic gesture. " Oil! I know I did! And I will try. i Bride brought me books—the most amusing books—and I thought of all the good little grey sheep on. the hill, and everything—but last night—it was Christmas Eve last night. Hawk! How could you expect me to sleep—remember,ing " ' . ■ Her voice trailed away in silence, and swift tears filled her brown eyes. The man made a little gesture of hopelessness. His thoughts flew back to another Christmas Eve, just five years past now —a Christmas Eve spent in a quaint, thatched cottage far away in England. In place of the sunlit, summer loveliness all round him, he could see the bare treeBranches in the little garden, the icicles hanging from the eaves. He saw himself waking in the wintry dawn to the sound of a tin trumpet, and sitting up in bed to find that it was being vigorously blown by a tall figure in a crimson dressinggown—a figure whose black eyes and well-cut mouth were strangely like his own. Rosemary herself, a slim, and girlish Rosemary, cosily huddled up in a quilted wrapper and little fur-lined slippers, was lightly tapping him on the cheek with a toy balloon that dangled from the end of a long stick.

"Merry Christmas!" they chorused, as Brian struggled back to the waking world, and the man in the crimson dressing-gown added vigorously, " Get up you lazy beggar. It is Christmas Day, and we have got to start early. You are missing all the fun. Talk about merry Christmas! Every pipe in the house is frozen solid, and 1 have been helping Bride to pour boiling water over the taps, to remind them that they are still on duty." And Brian had laughed idly, and pulled tha blankets over his head, and utterly refused to leave the snug cosiness of the bedclothes until Rosemary had slipped a long icicle down his neck. Five years ago! And he had forgotten—it was Rosemary who had remembered.

CHAPTER XX. A BUSH BEXDAL.

Because I love you, I've unselfish grown. And if your happiness required of me That I should give you up and make no m i <U ßtill would pray " May God watch over thee." Anon.

Tho stinging, bitter-sweet memories came to Brian now, thick and fast. He recalled the stocking full of odd absurdities, and one or two handsome presents that had been found hanging from his bedpost, the merry unpacking of its odd bundles, and the shouts of laughter that had greeted the appearance of each new curiosity. • They had been so very happy that morning, because the tears were not far behind.

As ho stood in Flower's fragrant sunlit garden, he could recall the long, cold motor drive that had followed—the numberless figures in khaki that had swarmed on the big station, and last of all the tense handclasp, and the oath he had taken at parting. And then—the train was gone—and all was desolate loneliness on the station, and Rosemary's drenched brown eyes were only one pair among hundreds there in the struggling wintry sunlight. Brian gave a sharp impatient sigh. " Life is a thing of contrasts!" he said soberly, " I forgot!" " But never before!" Rosemary assured him warmly. - " Never—never—it was I who forgot. Your memory has been most faithful."

"Come to dinner!" called Flower's clear voice from the doorway, when the sun shed a golden glory round her head, " quickly, dear people! Bride says the

chickens will be spoiled if they are left a moment longer, and Dawn wants to see who will get the lucky things out of tJi'e pudding." i • . "We are coming!" Rosemary called back in answer, " Wo must not spoil even the chickens on such a day. Why! It's a golden clay! Fit for oven Sunshine's heavenly Christmas." " Well! It is the loveliest morning for a wedding!" Flower said, peeping out of the window at the first faint pink streaks in the dawn-sky, " you do seem to be one of Fortune's favourites, and no mistake, Ailsa. So long as you are really suro that auntie and uncle won't feel annoyed and hurt at you being married like this before they can got here, you should be perfectly happy." "Well, I am absolutely certain!" declared Ailsa, with comfortable conviction. She sat up in bed, and clasped her hands loosely round her knees. "They will see that it could not possibly be helped. Really, Chrysanthe, they are the most delightfully sensible parents that ever a girl was blessed with." " Then you are very much to be envied!" Flower said a little sadly, " I told you long ago, you know, that Jim- was very much like his father, and I also told you that his father was the most perfectly wonderful husband I had ever seen. If you are not one of the happiest girls in the world, Ailsa, it will be only your own fault." "I mean to be happy!" Ailsa said, gazing dreamily out of t,he window, her fair hair framing her flower-like face with its fluffy waves, and bewitching little curls, " it will not be ray fault if we are not very happy indeed. You see, Flower, Jim and I were always meant for each other —I never really cared for Maurice, we only played at love, because we had been sweethearts as tiniest children. I suppose when you have been emptied out of hammocks with a boy and tippod out of wheelbarrows, and nearly drowned together, you naturally feel as though you sort of belong to each other. And then he was very brave and famous, and very good-looking, and he thought I was pretty, and he was dark, and I fair. I think that was how it really came about. And even then, as I told you, I thought ,1 liked Brian best, and he was the one who had done all the emptying, and tipping and drowning, so I never really cared at all. There has never been anyone else in my life, though I have known hundreds of nice boys, and Jim says there has never been any girl in his life but me except you, of course, dear." , " Well, you need not count me at all!" Flower said, with a laugh, Jim novel even fancied himself in love with me for a single instant, or I with him. We have always been the bost of friends—brother and sister, in fact, but anything else there has never been. Until Jim met you, that day long ago in England, I an sure he had cared for no girl. He, never mentioned you to me, which goes to show, I think, that he thought a good deal of you from the start. But then—■you wore another man's engagement ring,you see." " I think it is simply wonderful how everything should have worked round as it has!" Ailsa declared. "You see,' Flovffer, we must have been meant for each other. Do you remember the old Japanese legend of the perfect being who was cut into two halves, and had to wander to and fro in the world until the two halves camo together again ? Well .that is just us, Jim and me! I wish you could find your other half, Chrysanthe." " Probably there isn't one for me!' Flower said bravely. " Just recollect how many more women than men there are in the world. We haven't all got wandering halves to find. It is more than likely that I am one of the overplus!'' Ailsa shook her head doubtfully. "If you are, then there is something dreadfully wrong somewhere!" she declared positively. " I simply won't allow you to hint it." " After all it isn't of any real importance!" laughed Chrysanthe. "But I think you really should dress, dear. We have such a lot of things to do, and ten o'clock comes so dreadfully quickly." "It is a perfectly impossible hour for a wedding!" Ailsa declared. "If there was another train to-day I would never have consented to it. And only to think of the perfectly, gorgeous wedding dress that is hurrying over the sea as fast as it can, in one of mother's trunks. Never to be used—" she paused a moment, and gazed consideringly at hexcousin, with her head on one side, " never to be used by me, I mean!" she amended., " Of course, if yoxir other half should wander up this way quite unexpectedly, we should'insist upon you taking pity upon that poor dress. I am-sure it will be very lovely—mother's designs always are. Its heart will be broken." " Bettor hurt the wedding dress than hurt Jim!" said Flower. "He would have no pleasure on his wedding day if you were decked out in all the splendour that I am sure Auntie' Millie is bringing out for you. It would so emphasise the difference between what , you have always had, and what is the utmost he can possibly give you." " I suppose it would. I never thought of that, truly. Oh! It is best as it is. I And daddy will find some way of helping him, too, lam sure. Daddy is the loveliest, man in the world for. helping people so tactfully that they hardly know he is doing it. But I always thought my wedding would be quite different from this. Crowds of people, bridesmaidsRosemary, was to be my chief bridesmaid—" she paused a moment, and glanced across the room at her cousin, but Flower was gazing out,of the window. " And now—none of them ! Why!—l have not even got a new dress to be married in.'"

She made a little grimace at the sofa where the silver • tissue frock which once had been adorned with Shirley's pink rose lay carefully outspread. " But a very lovely one!" Flower laughed. " You are a fraud, Ailsa. What is the use of saying pitifully that your frock is not a new one, when you know perfectly well that the only reason you are wearing it is because -it is so much more perfect than anything you could possibly get here." Ailsa laughed. " I feel .in a mad mood," she confessed, "and truly I love my wedding dress. That anyone could do so much with a few yards of lace and silver ribbon as you have done there, Chrysanthe, is more than I would ever have believed to be possible before I came to New Zealand. I hope I shall be able to repay yea before long by giving you the other wedding gown. It would not need much alteration —we are not much different in size. I shall keep my eye open for that wandering half. He; ought to be one of the Ethel Dell men—strong, silent, bad-tempered—"

"Ailsa, spare me! I've no desire to do any wild-beast taming. Get-up and slip on some things, and then, if you come into the kitchen, I will give you some breakfast. You are not to go into the living room at all. Bride is looking after the children, and Mr. Damarel and Rosemary are decorating the room with all the roses left in Rosemary's garden." "Rosemary!" echoed Ailsa, unbelievingly. "Do you want to tell me that Rosemary is out of bed already?" " Nearly an hour ago, dear." " And they are decorating together—oh! how dreadful!"

" Why, dear ? Mr. Damarel does not caem to mind at all, and Rosemary is quite busy and happy. We must just treat them as a perfectly ordinary Ailsa. You notice that Bride calls Rosemary ' Mrs. Damarel' —and she wears a wedding-ring. Oh! I know ha declared that they were never married, but as Jim says, I think there is something that we do not know—something that they do not care to tell us." "I hate mysteries!" Ailsa declared vigorously, " arid this one has almost turned my hair grey. Never mind, Flower! I will get up straight away." Flower nodded, and slipped back to her kitchen, and Ailsa got slowly and linggeringly out of bed. (To bo continued daily.)