The room looked very inviting as she came in. Her big chair stood waiting for her, the light comfortably shaded beside it, and she crossed to it leisurely. She would rest a few minutes, and make her entries in the day-book and go to bed.
She sat down with a sigh of comfort and rocked gently.
The house was very quiet. The softly creaking rockers seemed the only thing awake....
Aunt Jane's eye fell on a long pasteboard box resting on a chair across the room. She looked at it doubtingly. She was too tired to get up. But the sight of the long box irritated her subtly. She had thought flowers were over—for the day. Sometimes Aunt Jane wished that she might never see another flower-box! She wished so now.... Just as she wanted to rest! Well, she would get up presently and take it to the ice-box. Let it stay there till morning. It was no time of night to be sending flowers.... Everybody in bed and asleep! She looked at it severely and got up from her chair and took it up.
Her eye fell on the address— She looked at it disbelievingly—and put it back on the chair—and looked at it.... She fidgeted about the room and came back to the chair.
Aunt Jane had never received a box of flowers in her life. She had handled hundreds of them—they had passed through her hands into the eager waiting hands held out for them. She had watched the faces light up, and she had looked on and smiled tolerantly. Folks' faces were her flowers, she had said.... She had never wanted to keep the flowers herself. Flowers were things to be passed on to some one else. No one had ever sent them to her. They knew better!
She looked down at the innocent box as if it contained something baleful—something that would disturb the quiet routine of life for her. She did not want to be disturbed—She did not want flowers! And she reached out her hand to the box.... It was very long and big. She wondered how she could have overlooked it when she came in.... If she had not been so tired she would have seen it—perhaps. Who could have sent it, she wondered; and a little, mild curiosity came under the white cap as her fingers undid the tape, and rolled it methodically, and lifted the lid of the box and raised the bit of waxed paper underneath— Aunt Jane gave a pleased sigh.
Herman Medfield's best roses—three dozen of them—shed their fragrance about her; and the little card lying on top of them held their message. She took it up gingerly and read it and put it down sharply—as if it had burned her—and looked at it.