“YOU'RE disgusted! What about, me?”
I had listened to as much of this little domestic disagreement as I cared to hear.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What is all this? Who has been here to see Mother?”
Both answered at once.
“That Colton girl,” cried Lute.
“That Mabel Colton,” said Dorinda.
“Miss Colton? She has been here? this afternoon.”
“Um-hm,” Dorinda nodded emphatically. “She stayed in your ma's room 'most an hour.”
“'Twas fifty-three minutes,” declared Lute. “I timed her by the clock. And she fetched a great, big bouquet. Comfort says she—”
I waited to hear no more, but went into Mother's room. The little bed chamber was fragrant with the perfume of flowers. A cluster of big Jacqueminot roses drooped their velvety petaled heads over the sides of the blue and white pitcher on the bureau. Mother loved flowers and I frequently brought her the old fashioned posies from Dorinda's little garden or wild blossoms from the woods and fields. But roses such as these were beyond my reach now-a-days. They grew in greenhouses, not in the gardens of country people.