Part 2 (1/2)

_The Lady_, returning: ”Oh, yes! Give me your pencil.” She writes on a piece of the white wrapping-paper. ”There! That is it.” She stands irresolute, with the pencil at her lip. ”There was something else that I seem to have forgotten.”

_The Florist:_ ”Your flowers?”

_The Lady:_ ”Oh, yes, my flowers. I nearly went away without deciding.

Let me see. Where are those white roses with the pink tinge on the edge of the petals?” The florist pushes the box towards her, and she looks down at the roses. ”No, they won't do. They look somehow--cruel! I don't wonder he wouldn't have them. They are totally out of character. I will take those white Bride roses, too. It seems a fatality, but there really isn't anything else, and I can laugh with her about them, if it all turns out well.” She talks to herself rather than the florist, who stands patient behind the counter, and repeats, dreamily, ”Laugh with her!”

_The Florist:_ ”How many shall I sendt you, matam?”

_The Lady:_ ”Oh, loads. As many as you think I ought to have. I shall not have any other flowers, and I mean to toss them on the table in loose heaps. Perhaps I shall have some smilax to go with them.”

_The Florist:_ ”Yes; or cypress wine.”

_The Lady:_ ”No; that is too c.r.a.py and creepy. Smilax, or nothing; and yet I don't like that hard, s.h.i.+ny, varnishy look of smilax either. You wouldn't possibly have anything like that wild vine, it's scarcely more than a golden thread, that trails over the wayside bushes in New England? Dodder, they call it.”

_The Florist:_ ”I nefer heardt off it.”

_The Lady:_ ”No, but that would have been just the thing. It suggests the color of her hair; it would go with her. Well, I will have the smilax too, though I don't like it. I don't see why all the flowers should take to being so inexpressive. Send all the smilax you judge best. It's quite a long table, nine or ten feet, and I want the vine going pretty much all about it.”

_The Florist:_ ”Perhaps I better sendt somebody to see?”

_The Lady:_ ”Yes, that would be the best. Good-morning.”

_The Florist:_ ”Goodt--morning, matam. I will sendt rhoundt this afternoon.”

_The Lady:_ ”Very well.” She is at the door, and she is about to open it, when it is opened from the outside, and another lady, deeply veiled, presses hurriedly in, and pa.s.ses down the shop to the counter, where the florist stands sorting the long-stemmed Bride roses in the box before him. The first lady does not go out; she lingers at the door, looking after the lady who has just come in; then, with a little hesitation, she slowly returns, as if she had forgotten something, and waits by the stove until the florist shall have attended to the new-comer.

_The Second Lady_, throwing back her veil, and bending over to look at the box of roses: ”What beautiful roses! What do you call these?”

_The Florist:_ ”That is a new rhoce: the Pridte. It is jost oudt. It is coing to be a very bopular rhoce.”

_The Second Lady:_ ”How very white it is! It seems not to have the least touch of color in it! Like snow! No; it is too cold!”

_The Florist:_ ”It _iss_ gold-looging.”

_The Second Lady:_ ”What do they use this rose for? For--for”--

_The Florist:_ ”For everything! Weddtings, theatre barties, afternoon dteas, dtinners, funerals”--

_The Second Lady:_ ”Ah, that is shocking! I can't have it, then. I want to send some flowers to a friend who has lost her only child--a young girl--and I wish it to be something expressive--characteristic--something that won't wound them with other a.s.sociations. Have you nothing--nothing of that kind? I want something that shall be significant; something that shall be like a young girl, and yet--Haven't you some very tall, slender, delicate flowers? Not this deathly white, but with, a little color in it? Isn't there some kind of lily?”

_The Florist:_ ”Easder lilies? Lily-off-the-valley? Chonquils? Azaleas?

Hyacinths? Marcuerites?”

_The Second Lady:_ ”No, no; they won't do, any of them! Haven't you any other kind of roses, that won't be so terribly--terribly”--She looks round over the shelves and the windows banked with flowers.

_The Florist:_ ”Yes, we haf dtea-rhoces, all kindts; Marshal Niel; Matame Watterville and Matame Cousine--these pink ones; they are sister rhoces; Matame Hoste, this plack one; the Midio, here; Chacks”--

_The Second Lady:_ ”No, no! They won't any of them do. There ought to be a flower invented that would say something--pity, sympathy--that wouldn't hurt more than it helped. Isn't there anything? Some flowering vine?”

_The Florist:_ ”Here is the chasmin. That is a very peautiful wine, with that sdtar-shaped flower; and the berfume”--