Rose laughed merrily. "Goodness, Chi! you want us to have more than our share. We had a perfect deluge last year when Hazel was here; you know it makes a difference without her. You said yourself that there was a good deal of bulk, but it was pretty light weight--don't you remember?"
Chi elevated one bushy eyebrow. "I ain't forgot; but I don't know about it's bein' any Deluge--it appeared to me it was a Shadrach, Meshach, 'n' Abednego kind of a business--" He gave the back log a kick that sent the sparks up the chimney in a grand pyrotechnic show. "Seems as if I could see those posies, now, a-shrivellin' in the fireplace. Never thought you treated those innocent things quite on the square, Rose-pose!"
Rose's head was bent low over her work. Chi went on, bracing himself to the self-imposed task of enlightening her:--
"I don't want to meddle, Rose, in anybody's business, but it ain't set well with me ever since--the way you treated those roses; 'n', after all, we 're both members of the Nobody's Business But Our Own Society, 'n' if anybody 's goin' to meddle, perhaps I 'm the one. I 've thought a good many times you would n't have been quite so harsh with 'em, if you had n't overlooked this in your flare-up--" He drew out of his breast pocket a card--Jack 's--with the verse on the back. "Read that, 'n' see if you ain't dropped a stitch somewhere that you can pick up in time." He handed her the card.
Rose looked up surprised, but with burning cheeks. She took the card, read the verse, turned it over on the name side, and rose from her chair. Every particle of color had left her face. She went over to the fireplace, and, bending, dropped the little piece of pasteboard upon the glowing back-log.
"The sentiment belongs with the roses, Chi; don't let's have any more Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego business--I 'm tired of it." She spoke indifferently; then, resuming her seat, called out in a cheery voice:
"Martie, won't you come here a minute, and see if I have put on this gore right?"
"I 'll come, dear."
Chi, nonplussed, irritated, repulsed, set his teeth hard and abruptly left the room.
Outside in the shed he clenched his fist and shook it vigorously at the closed door of the long-room: "--By George Washin'ton!" he muttered, "I 'll make you pay up for that, Rose Blossom. You can't come any of your high-flyers' games on me-- Just you put that in your pipe and smoke it! Thunderation! what gets into women and girls, sometimes?" He seized the milk-pails from the shelf and hurried to the barn nearly running down Cherry in his wrathful excitement.