"Mis' Sweet made paper flowers trying to say the beautiful things she felt inside, jest like that poet. She couldn't buy none of the pretty crinkled papers that we see nowadays; she never saw none of those; but she saved all the little pieces of tissue paper, and any scrap of silk, and the neighbors saved 'em for her too, and they saved their broom wire; and no one ever thought of throwin' away an old green window shade—it was sent to Mis' Sweet for her leaves. She twisted the broom wires with any piece of green paper that she could git hold of, and she cut the papers into flowers, the white ones into daisies and the little pieces of silk was colored with dyes that the neighbors give her that they had left over, and she made roses and apple blossoms and begonias and geraniums, and all the flowers that she knowed. If some were peculiar and didn't look like much o' anything she called them jest wild flowers. She made them all into bouquets. And there wasn't a new baby born in the village but that the mother found by her bedside a bouquet of Mis' Sweet's, and no bride went to the altar but she had a little piece o' orange blossom on her that had been lovingly pinned on by Mis' Sweet, and before the lid was closed over our dead—they had slipped in their fingers a little flower from their old neighbor. And do you think that we laughed at her stiff little bouquets? No! We all loved 'em and we understood, 'cause with each leaf made out of our old window shades and from each wire from our wore out brooms, there was a little love mixed in with the coverin'."
She was silent for a few moments; then she added:
"And I think that this young poet will find a way to give something to the world, if he really loves it and wants to give, same as Mis' Sweet did."
They were returning home along the drive.
"We haven't made half the calls that we should," Daphne said. "We must go another day."
Drusilla shook her head decisively.
"No; I won't make no more calls."
"Oh, but, Miss Doane, you must. You must return your calls."
"Oh, but I mustn't, and I won't," said Drusilla, shaking her head obstinately. "I most froze at some of them places, and I won't risk it again. I won't make calls. They can come to me, Miss Thornton, but I won't go back."
"But they won't come to see you if you don't return the calls."