Elizabeth Leverett's heart was touched and she swallowed over a lump in her throat. She had taken up the rose from a place where it had been smothered with those of larger growth and given it to the child who had begged for "a garden of her very own." She had not supposed it would live. And that Cynthia should bring her the firstfruits!
"I'm obliged to you," she returned huskily. "They are very beautiful." And she wondered the child had not given them to Chilian.
"I wish you liked a few flowers every day," the little girl said wistfully.
"Well—I might;" reluctantly.
"They are so lovely. The world is so beautiful. It's very hard to be ill in summer, in winter one wouldn't mind it so much. But I am glad you can sit up."
Was it tears that Elizabeth winked away?
She had many serious thoughts through these months of helplessness. She had always measured everything by the strict line of duty, of usefulness. There was a virtue in enduring hardness as a good soldier, and the harder it was the more virtue it held in it. Her room was plain, almost to bareness. There had been a faded patchwork top quilt at first, until Mother Taft insisted upon having something nicer. But it had to be folded up carefully at sundown, when the likelihood of calls was over. And she did put one of the new rugs on the floor.
"That's beginning to go," Mrs. Taft said. "Some one will catch their foot in it and have a bad fall."
"It could be mended, I suppose."
"Yes. There's a new one needed in the kitchen. I'll sew it up for that. Land sakes! you've got enough in this house to last ten lifetimes!"