His leathery cheeks were flushed, his hard eyes shone: “Oh ... it was grand, ma’am. I was saying to Mrs. Rudge, ‘Well, I said, one doesn’t often see a sight like that!’ I said. There was a new white rose, sir, well, I’ve never seen anything to beat it....”
“And what about the Daily Clarion rose?”
“Well, sir, a very fine rose, certainly, but I’m not sure if it would do with us ... but that white rose, sir, I said to Mrs. Rudge, ‘you could almost say it was like the moon,’ I said.”
And what was Time but a gigantic rose, shedding, one by one, its petals? And then Jollypot gathered them up and made them into pot-pourri; but still the petals went on falling, silently, ceaselessly.
CHAPTER XI
1
That year there was a marvellous harvest, and by the end of July the sun had burned the wheat into the very quintessence of gold, and every evening for a few moments the reflection of its dying rays transfigured it into a vision, so glorious, so radiant, that Dick, looking up from his fish, would exclaim to the dinner-table, “Good God! Look at the wheat!”
Thus must the memory of the corn of Cana, sown with symbols, heavy with memories and legends, radiant with gleams caught from the Golden City in the skies, have appeared to St. John dying in the desert.