She followed Miss Theodosia to the door. Even then she could not stop talking. Her excited little voice followed Miss Theodosia home.
"He took us! He's blue-printing us to see if we wiggled. Elly Precious did—mercy gracious! But maybe one of him, just one, didn't. He's goin' to make reg'lar black an' white pictures of the unwiggled ones. I guess you'll be surprised when you see us!" She was surprised. John Bradford brought the little blue pictures to her the next day. They bent over them together.
"Oh!" Miss Theodosia uttered softly, for the pictures were instantly tangled in her heartstrings. She could hardly bear the one unwiggled one of Elly Precious. He was draped in tall red roses; they covered his little body and trailed their stems about his outspread legs. He had the effect of peeping at Miss Theodosia through roses. But what she could see of him was Elly Precious—her baby.
"Stefana posed him," the Story Man said, smilingly. "And Evangeline and
Carruthers, too. Look at Evangeline."
Across Evangeline trailed the roses. It was a rigid, terribly rigid, Evangeline, but the roses saved her. Some softening grace emanated from them and touched the solemn little face. A little more of Evangeline than of Elly Precious peeped from behind them.
"Carruthers!—et, tu, Carruthers!" murmured Miss Theodosia. For here again was the trail of the roses. Stefana had "posed" them in all the little pictures. The effect of a rose-draped Carruthers was almost startling. He gazed from behind them stolidly, unsmiling and unhappy-souled. Carruthers did not enjoy being taken.
"Now look at Stefana," John Bradford said. This was his special exhibit—exhibit S. He watched Miss Theodosia's face as she glanced at the little blue print.
No roses trailing there. Just a radiant-faced Stefana gazing at Miss
Theodosia. It was the same face that hung on the walls of her memory.
Miss Theodosia had the sense of roses there, out of sight; it was as if
Stefana rocked them gently in her lap.
"She wouldn't wear the flowers herself," the Story Man was saying;
"Neither Evangeline nor I could make her. Queer little freak."
"She is wearing them!" smiled Miss Theodosia, "I can see them. It's only because you are a man that you can't see,—you and Evangeline! Look at the roses in Stefana's eyes—in her soul—"