CHAPTER IX
THE EIGHTH ROSE
On the morning after the party Polly was early downstairs.
Breakfast not being quite ready, she filled up the time by giving fresh water to her birthday roses.
“You are going to the hospital to-day,” she told them, as she clipped the ends of the stems and broke off two or three great thorns. “That is, most of you,” she amended. “Let me see, you, and you, and you,” she decided, laying aside three big beauties. Their number was doubled, and then she hesitated.
“Mother, you wouldn’t keep more than three, would you?”
Mrs. Dudley looked up from the grapefruit she was cutting.
“That is a good number to look at,” she smiled.
“So I think,” Polly agreed; “but they can have only one apiece over at the hospital. One alone is pretty, though,” she mused. “I’d leave only one for us, but if Leonora should come, she might be afraid I didn’t care for them. No, I think eight will have to do, and it will be better to give to those that have to lie abed, won’t it?”
Only waiting for her mother’s approval, she went on:—