“Yes. How will that do?” said Dorothy. “They were a queer lot, those children,—perfect little fiends, I called them; but I suppose there’s going to be a pretty well mixed up party in that other world. Think I’d like to choose my mansion. It wouldn’t be the nursery. Sakes alive! what was I saying?” Her face became grave, with a look of yearning tenderness in her eyes. “Miss Rose, I oughtn’t to have said that. There would be the very place I should go for first; and only to think I might not get in! Where would I be then? I tell you, Miss Rose, you’ve got to begin pretty early with your tongue, if you want to make it keep all the commandments.”
Carington smiled. “I fancy dumb folks are as bad sinners as we. After all, one slanders the tongue. One does not know half how naughty a thought is until we have put it into speech.”
“Lord! Mr. Carington! There’s a heap of wiseness in that you said. Guess I’ll be set up about talking after that!”
Here she took up her half-dozen roses, nourished with care on the south end of the cabin, which Dorothy had whitewashed to get more heat upon the scanty children of her garden. She considered them with affectionate care, touching a leaf here and there, her head on one side.
“I guess they’re nice enough, even for Miss Anne. Mind, there’s six of ’em. Don’t you lose any, Miss Rose!”
“Shall I carry them?” said Carington. “And the basket? Where is it?”
“Oh, I’ll smudge that a bit to get the fish smell out, and I’ll fetch it to-morrow. I’m coming after Mrs. Macbeth, or whatever her name is. No, Miss Rose is to take the bouquet. They’re sort of relations, you see. Men can’t be trusted with flowers, and roses are scarce up here.”
“You might 'p’int’ me, Mrs. Maybrook,” said Carington, laughing, as he followed Rose at a little distance.
“Reckon I’m too old.” And she stayed in the doorway of her poor little home, kindly, by no means unhappy, and giving the benediction of a smile to these two people in their youth of health and prosperity and love. “I guess he’s p’inted already,” she said, as she stood.
Rose turned at the wood-skirts, and nodded good-by. The parable of the roses had been by no means meant as such, but neither the maid nor the man at her side failed to capture the possibilities of its meaning. They walked on in silence for a while, she with a faint hope that her companion had not been as apprehensive as she, and he, a little amused, and with a not unpleasing impression as to the slight embarrassment which, despite her training, Rose had betrayed when their eyes met a moment while Dorothy was speaking.