She followed Hazel into her room, and after she was in bed, Rose knelt by her side, and together they said, "Our Father." Then Rose bent over to receive Hazel's loving kiss and whispered, "Oh, Rose, I 'm so happy to have you here," and whispered back, "And I 'm so happy to be with you, Hazel--good-night."
"Good-night."
Rose went back to her room. At last she was alone. She drew one of the easy-chairs up before the wood-fire that was dying down, put her bare feet on the warm fender, and, for a while, dreamed waking dreams. It was all so strange. The cathedral clock on the mantel chimed twelve. They were all asleep in the farmhouse on the Mountain--it was time for her to be. She rose, tiptoed softly into the dressing-room, took from the bowl the spray of white lilacs she had worn with the other flowers that evening, shook off the water, and drew the stem through a buttonhole in the yoke of her simple night-dress. She tiptoed back again into her room, looked up at the dainty, canopied bed, then laid herself down within it, and, almost immediately, fell asleep--with her hand resting on the white fragrance that lay upon her heart.
XXIII
BEHOLD HOW GREAT A MATTER A LITTLE FIRE KINDLETH
It was so delightful! The weeks were passing all too quickly, and the letters to Mount Hunger waxed eloquent in praise of everybody's kindness.
Jack had come on to lead a cotillion with Rose at Aunt Carrie's. It was a weighty affair--the selecting of the flowers for her. White violets they must be, and white violets were about as rare as white raspberries. Jack gave the florist his own address.
"I 'll see them, myself, before I send them up; for I won't trust anyone's eyes but my own," he said to himself as he hurried home to dress for dinner with a friend. "I wish I had n't promised Grayson to meet him at the Club before seven. I 'm afraid they won't come in time." He looked at his watch. "I 'm going to make them a test--and see what she 'll do. She 's so friendly and frank and all that, I can't find out even whether she 's beginning to care."
Jack's absorption in the theme was such that he put his latch-key in wrong-side up, and, in consequence, wrestled with the lock till he had worked himself into a fever of impatience; finally he touched the button before he discovered the trouble.
"Any packages come for me, Jason?" he inquired of the butler, whose dignified manner of locomotion had been rudely shaken by Jack's unceasing pressure on the electric-bell.