“Oh!” cried Polly, the thought suddenly popping into her head, “why can’t we go round to Mrs. Jocelyn’s and see hers? It won’t be very much out of our way, and then you can tell just how they’ll look. You know Mrs. Jocelyn, don’t you?”
Colonel Gresham nodded gravely.
“Then you won’t mind going to see her roses, shall you?” Polly chattered on. “She has a big rose garden at the side of the house, lots of beautiful ones; but I ’most know you’ll like the Silver Moon kind best.”
“I don’t believe I like any kind of roses,” the Colonel broke out abruptly. “They have too many thorns. Somebody would always be getting scratched if they were on my piazza. I reckon I won’t have them, after all.”
Polly started to speak, looked up, and then shut her lips on the words. The stern set of her companion’s face forbade talk. Yet in a moment it softened, the words came again, and this time they were not forced back.
“Roses are so beautiful, and the thorns are so little I forget about them.” She halted, but the Colonel did not respond.
“Once when I was a very small girl,” she went on, “I picked a rose in our yard, and scratched my hand so it bled. I ran, crying, to mamma; but she didn’t pay any attention to that, only told me to look at the rose. It was a lovely tea rose, the color of sunset when the sky is all yellow with just a bit of a pink flush. She talked about it, till I forgot my finger. When I happened to recollect, the hurt seemed so little compared with that beautiful rose. I guess that’s why I don’t mind thorns any more. I’ve always remembered it.”
“A good thing to remember,” spoke out Colonel Gresham fervently, “and a blessed thing to live up to—if only we could! But some thorns pierce deep!”
He did not look at Polly. One might have thought him talking to Lone Star, for his eyes were on the horse’s head.