"Asters?"
"No, no, no! But I hoped you'd guess asters. They're chrysanthemums—you see, fashion will penetrate even here. But they're the smallest and simplest I could find. What do I care for orchids and American beauties, and all those other expensive things under glass? How much does it please me to have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage plants in the front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, with our position, I suppose it can't be helped. No; what I want is a bed of portulacca, and some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a pole. As soon as I get poor enough to afford it I'm going to have a lot of phlox and London pride and bachelor's buttons out there in the back yard, and the girls can run their clotheslines somewhere else."
"It's hard to keep flowers in a city," said Jane.
"I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little rosebush in the front yard. I hated so to leave it behind—one of those little yellow brier-roses. No, it wasn't yellow; it was just—'yaller.' And it always scratched my nose when I tried to smell it. But oh, child"—wistfully—"if I could only smell it now!"
"Couldn't you have transplanted it?" asked Jane, sympathetically.
"I went back the very next day after we moved out, with a peach-basket and a fire-shovel. But my poor bush was buried under seven feet of yellow sand. To-day there's seven stories of brick and mortar. So all I've got from the old place is just this furniture of ma's and the wall-paper."
"The wall-paper?"
"Not the identical same, of course. It's like what I had in my bedroom when I was a girl. I remembered the pattern, and tried everywhere to match it. At first I just tried on Twenty-second Street. Then I went down-town. Then I tried all the little places away out on the West Side. Then I had the pattern put down on paper, and I made a tour of the country. I went to Belvidere, and to Beloit, and to Janesville, and to lots of other places between here and Geneva. And finally—"
"Well, what—finally?"
"Finally, I sent down East and had eight or ten rolls made to order. I chased harder than anybody ever chased for a Raphael, and I spent more than if I had hung the room with Gobelins; but—"