They all laughed this time.
"Well, now we've done the whole house, and we'll take the yard," proposed Quentina, as, a little later, she led the way down-stairs and out of doors. "There! aren't my nasturtiums beautiful?" she exulted, with the air of a fond mother displaying her first-born. She was pointing to a bed of straggling, puny plants, beautifully free from weeds, and showing here and there a few brilliant blossoms.
Tilly turned her back suddenly. Cordelia looked distressed. Bertha cried thoughtlessly:
"Oh, but you ought to see Genevieve's, Quentina, if you want to see nasturtiums!"
"Oh, but I have Carlos," cut in Genevieve, hurriedly, "and Carlos can make anything grow. What a pretty dark one this is," she finished, bending over one of the plants.
Quentina's face clouded.
"I don't suppose they are much, really," she admitted. "But I've worked so hard over them! Father says the earth isn't good at all. I was so pleased when that big red one came out! I made a poem on it right off:
"'O nasturtium, sweet nasturtium,
Did you blossom just for me?
Where, oh, where did you unearth 'em—
All those colors that I see?'
That's the way it began. Wasn't I lucky to think of that 'unearth 'em?' Besides, it's really true, you know. They do unearth 'em, and 'twas such a nice rhyme for nasturtium. Now there's petunia; I think that's a perfectly beautiful sounding word, but I've never been able to find a single thing that rhymed with it. I do love flowers so," she added, after a moment; "but we've never had many. They always burn up, or dry up, or get eaten up, or just don't come up at all. Of course we've never had a really pretty place. Ministers like us don't, you know," she finished cheerfully.
There was no reply to this. Not one of the Happy Hexagons could think of anything to say. For once even Tilly was at a loss for words. It was Quentina herself who broke the silence.