"Oh! Oh, come right in, Miss Theodosia!" she cried welcomingly. "But please to excuse me for not getting up—I can't bear to disturb them. Seems as if I could sit right straight in this chair till they withered! I'm breathing easy so not to breathe the smell out. I never had any roses before."
Her voice lowered to almost a whisper. She whispered a little laugh.
"Seems as if I'd ought to be married while I have 'em! They're such beautiful roses to be married in!"
And this was Stefana, their matter-of-fact, starchy little white-washer!
This rapt, dreamy little face was Stefana's face!
"Sometimes," Stefana murmured, "sometimes I've dreampt—" but Miss Theodosia did not quite catch what it was Stefana had sometimes "dreampt," but it was something sweet. Stefana a little dreamer of sweet dreams! One of them must have been a rose-dream, and this was that dream come true.
The call of congratulation was a brief one. It seemed little short of irreverence to have seen at all that picture of Stefana rocking her roses in the little wooden rocker. Miss Theodosia slipped away with it hung on the walls of her mind—she would never take it down.
John Bradford was coming along the road and she went a little way to meet him. Some of Stefana's radiance was in her own face.
"I've found it," she announced in soft triumph.
"Good!" he hazarded at random. It was always good to find things. But he wondered at the radiance.
"My romance that I knew was somewhere. I've found it! I told you so!"