Queechy Volume Ii Part 27

"Handsomest! I never saw anything like it. I shall wear some of these to-night, Mamma."

"You are in a great hurry to appropriate it," said Constance; "how do you know but it is mine?"

"Which of us is it for, Joe?"

"Say it is mine, Joe, and I will vote you ? the best article of your kind," said Constance, with an inexpressible glance at Fleda.

"Who brought it, Joe?" said Mrs. Evelyn.

"Yes, Joe, who brought it? where did it come from, Joe?" Joe had hardly a chance to answer.

"I really couldn't say, Miss Florence; the man wasn't known to me."

"But did he say it was for Florence or for me?"

"No, Ma'am ? he ?"

"_Which_ did he say it was for?"

"He didn't say it was either for Miss Florence or for you, Miss Constance; he ?"

"But didn't he say who sent it?"

"No, Ma'am. It's ?"

"Mamma, here is a white moss that is beyond everything! with two of the most lovely buds. Oh!" said Constance, clasping her hands, and whirling about the room in comic ecstasy, "I sha'n't survive it if I cannot find out where it is from."

"How delicious the scent of these tea-roses is!" said Fleda.

"You ought not to mind the snow-storm to-day, after this, Florence. I should think you would be perfectly happy."

"I shall be, if I can contrive to keep them fresh to wear to- night. Mamma, how sweetly they would dress me!"

"They're a great deal too good to be wasted so," said Mrs.

Evelyn; "I sha'n't let you do it."

"Mamma! it wouldn't take any of them at all for my hair, and the _bouquet de corsage_, too; there'd be thousands left. Well, Joe, what are you waiting for?"

"I didn't say," said Joe, looking a good deal blank and a little afraid ? "I should have said ? that the bouquet ? is ?"

"What is it?"

"It is ? I believe, Ma'am ? the man said it was for Miss Ringgan."

"For me!" exclaimed Fleda, her cheeks forming instantly the most exquisite commentary on the gift that the giver could have desired. She took in her hand the superb bunch of flowers from which the fingers of Florence unclosed as if it had been an icicle.

"Why didn't you say so before?" she inquired sharply; but the "fowling-piece" had wisely disappeared.

"I am very glad!" exclaimed Edith. "They have had plenty all winter, and you haven't had one. I am very glad it is yours, Fleda."

But such a shadow had come upon every other face that Fleda's pleasure was completely overclouded. She smelled at her roses, just ready to burst into tears, and wis.h.i.+ng sincerely that they had never come.

"I am afraid, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, quietly going on with her breakfast, "that there is a thorn somewhere among those flowers."

Fleda was too sure of it; but not by any means the one Mrs.

Evelyn intended.

"He never could have got half those from his own green-house, Mamma," said Florence, "if he had cut every rose that was in it; and he isn't very free with his knife, either."

"I said nothing about anybody's greenhouse," said Mrs. Evelyn, "though I don't suppose there is more than one Lot in the city they could have come from."

"Well," said Constance, settling herself back in her chair and closing her eyes, "I feel extinguished! Mamma, do you suppose it possible that a hot cup of tea might revive me? I am suffering from a universal sense of unappreciated merit, and n.o.body can tell what the pain is that hasn't felt it."

"I think you are extremely foolish, Constance," said Edith.

"Fleda hasn't had a single flower sent her since she has been here, and you have had them every other day. I think Florence is the only one that has a right to be disappointed."

"Dear Florence," said Fleda, earnestly, "you shall have as many of them as you please, to dress yourself ? and welcome!"

"Oh, no ? of course not!" Florence said; "it's of no sort of consequence ? I don't want them in the least, my dear. I wonder what somebody would think to see his flowers in my head!"

Fleda secretly had mooted the same question, and was very well pleased not to have it put to the proof. She took the flowers up stairs after breakfast, resolving that they should not be an eyesore to her friends; placed them in water, and sat down to enjoy and muse over them in a very sorrowful mood. She again thought she would take the first opportunity of going home. How strange! ? out of their abundance of tributary flowers, to grudge her this one bunch! To be sure, it was a magnificent one. The flowers were mostly roses, of the rarer kinds, with a very few fine camellias; all of them cut with a freedom that evidently had known no constraint but that of taste, and put together with an exquisite skill that Fleda felt sure was never possessed by any gardener. She knew that only one hand had had anything to do with them, and that the hand that had bought, not the one that had sold; and "How very kind!" presently quite supplanted "How very strange!" "How exactly like him! and how singular that Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters should have supposed they could have come from Mr.

Thorn!" It was a moral impossibility that _he_ should have put such a bunch of flowers together; while to Fleda's eye they so bore the impress of another person's character, that she had absolutely been glad to get them out of sight for fear they might betray him. She hung over their varied loveliness, tasted and studied it, till the soft breath of the roses had wafted away every cloud of disagreeable feeling, and she was drinking in pure and strong pleasure from. each leaf and bud.

What a very apt emblem of kindness and friends.h.i.+p she thought them; when their gentle preaching and silent sympathy could alone so nearly do friends.h.i.+p's work; for to Fleda there was both counsel and consolation in flowers. So she found it this morning. An hour's talk with them had done her a great deal of good; and, when she dressed herself and went down to the drawing-room, her grave little face was not less placid than the roses she had left; she would not wear even one of them down to be a disagreeable reminder. And she thought that still snowy day was one of the very pleasantest she had had in New York.

Florence went to Mrs. Decatur's; but Constance, according to her avowed determination, remained at home to see the fun.

Fleda hoped most sincerely there would be none for her to see.

But, a good deal to her astonishment, early in the evening, Mr. Carleton walked in, followed very soon by Mr. Thorn.

Constance and Mrs. Evelyn were forthwith in a perfect effervescence of delight, which as they could not very well give it full play, promised to last the evening; and Fleda, all her nervous trembling awakened again, took her work to the table, and endeavoured to bury herself in it. But ears could not be fastened as well as eyes; and the mere sound of Mrs.

Evelyn's voice sometimes sent a thrill over her.

"Mr. Thorn," said the lady, in her smoothest manner, "are you a lover of floriculture, Sir?"

"Can't say that I am, Mrs. Evelyn ? except as practised by others."

"Then you are not a _connoisseur_ in roses? Miss Ringgan's happy lot ? sent her a most exquisite collection this morning, and she has been wanting to apply to somebody who could tell her what they are ? I thought you might know. Oh, they are not here," said Mrs. Evelyn, as she noticed the gentleman's look round the room; "Miss Ringgan judges them too precious for any eyes but her own. Fleda, my dear, wont you bring down your roses to let Mr. Thorn tell us their names?"

"I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me, Mrs. Evelyn ? I believe he would find it a puzzling task."

"The surest way, Mrs. Evelyn, would be to apply at the fountain head for information," said Thorn, drily.

"If I could get at it," said Mrs. Evelyn (Fleda knew, with quivering lips) ? "but it seems to me I might as well try to find the Dead Sea!"

"Perhaps Mr. Carleton might serve your purpose," said Thorn.

That gentleman was at the moment talking to Constance.

"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "are you a judge, Sir?"