“Why do you laugh?”
“I don’t know. But I did hate being made to go to church—though of course your father used to preach really well.”
“Mamma . . . He grew roses up the church, I think. I liked that very much. They were so pretty.”
“An’ Mrs. Haye made him take them down again.”
“Did she? I wonder why. Do you like roses?”
“Very much. There used to be so many of them in that garden at the old Vicarage. Father was always crazy on them, an’ so was I.”
“The rose is lovely, June, don’t you think? The poets sing so often of them. They call her the queen of flowers. ‘The damask colour of thy leaves.’ ‘Sweetness dwells in rosy bowers.’ ‘The blushing rose.’”
“Oh yes. They were all over our garden.”
“Then you must have lived in a way dear to the lyrical poets of the seventeenth century. How charming!”