Mr Campion took the volume obediently and pushed up his spectacles.
‘The Language and Sentiment of Flowers,’ he read. ‘Published by Messrs Ballantyne and Hanson, London and Edinburgh, 1863, price sixpence. Rhododendron: danger, beware.’ He looked up. ‘Eh? Where’s the other one?’ He took the final wilted stalk on which a few purple buds were just observable. ‘That’s Monk’s-hood, is it, Charles?’
‘Was when I went to school. What does it say? “The bums are in”?’
Mr Campion turned the pages among which the pressed flowers of earlier heart-throbs lay brown and sad.
‘Monk’s-hood,’ he said at last. ‘Well well. “A deadly foe is here”.’
Behind him Amanda laughed. ‘Again?’ she said.
Charlie Luke was frowning. He seemed mildly affronted.
‘Mourning—danger—do not refuse me,’ he repeated. That’s
