"Yes, Mr. Herman sent them and you're going to each have one for your own. I'm going to let you choose."
There was laughing and chatter and a happy stir as Aunt Jane carried the boxes from bed to bed.
She watched the hands reach to the choosing—and hesitate—and the eyes fill with light—and little smiles come as they sank back contented.... She had a sudden glimpse of Herman Medfield in his blue-and-gold Chinese coat, waving them away.
"Seems a pity he can't see them," she thought, watching the faces. "They're all different—just as different as the flowers be!"
For some of them held the flowers in both hands; and some of them laid them on the pillows and some were smelling them and some were only looking; and one blossom was caught into the iron framework of a bed where the sun fell on it and the child was looking at it with wonder-filled eyes.... It was her own—her flower—that some one had sent—a crimson rose with soft dark color clear to the heart of it where the sun went in. It nodded down to her.
Aunt Jane, looking at her, thought of the people who had sent the flowers to Herman Medfield.
"I guess they didn't any of them think anything quite as nice as this would come of their flowers!" she said to the nurse who had brought the vases and jars for the flowers and was standing beside her at the table.
The nurse glanced down the ward. "They like them, don't they? But it seems a pity, almost, not to have them in water. They fade so soon!"
"Well, I don't know"—Aunt Jane surveyed the room slowly—"I guess they're doing about as much good now as they ever will. There's something about a flower—about holding it right in your hand—that does something to you. It isn't the same thing as having it in water."