They were not amateur Florists.

Down in a near-by market is a little florist's shop, so small that one might pass twenty times without noticing it; the man, a local authority, who has kept it for years, makes a specialty of the great long-stemmed single violets, whose fleeting fragrance no words may express.

Ah, no!" cried Colonel Musgrave, warming to his subjectand regarding it, too, very intently; "ah, no, a face that could be patched together at the nearest florist's would not haunt a man's dreams o'nights, as hers does!

These gentlemen, who rank as the most eminent florists and nurserymen of their time, have here extensive green and hot houses which are heated by steam; the ingenious apparatus belonging to which has been principally devised by themselves.

But the period of efflorescence has not yet arrived; a "call" came in due season, and this carried the ministerial florist to another "sphere of action."

Her delight at the crowd of promenaders, the picturesque florists' shops, and the general buzz of night life was almost pathetic.