Every morning, before it was light, her man and his wife would go into the garden and gather all the roses that were ripe for sale; then with full baskets on their backs they would set out, and get to the market just as the level sunbeams from the east were striking all the vanes and spires of the city into gold. There they would dispose of their flowers to the florists and salesmen of the town, and after that trudge home again to hoe, and dig, and weed, and water, and prune, and plant for the rest of the day. No man ever saw them the one without the other, and the thought that such a thing might some day happen was the only fear and sorrow of their lives. That they had no children of their own was scarcely a sorrow to them. “It seems to me,” said her man after they had been married for some years, “that God means that our roses are to be our children since He has made us love them so much. They will last when we are grown grey, and will support and comfort us in our old age.” All the roses they had were red, and varied little in kind, yet her man and his wife had a name for each of them; to every tree they had given a name, until it almost seemed that the trees knew, and tried to answer when they heard the voices which spoke to them. “Jane Janet, and you ought to blossom more freely at your age!” his wife might say to one some evening as she went round and watered the flowers; and the next day, when the two came to their dark morning’s gathering, Jane Janet would show ten or twelve great blooms under the light of the lantern, every one of them the birth of a single night. “Mary Maudlin,” the gardener would say, as he washed the blight off a favourite rose, “to be sure, you are very beautiful, but did I not love you so, you were more trouble than all your sisters put together.” And then all at once great dew-drops would come tumbling down out of Mary Maudlin’s eyes at the tender words of his reproach. So day by day the companionable feet of the happy couple moved to and fro, always intent on the tender nurturing of their children. In their garden they had bees too, who drew all their honey from the roses, and lived in a cone-thatched hive close under the porch; and that honey was famous through all the country-side, for its flavour was like no other honey made in the world. Sometimes his wife said to her man, “I think our garden is looked after for us by some good Spirit; perhaps it is the Saints after whom we have named our rose-children.” Her man made answer, “It is rich in years, which, like an old wine, have made it gain in flavour; it has been with us from father to son for three hundred years, and that is a great while.” “A full fairy’s lifetime!” said his wife. “’Tis a pity we shall not hand it on, being childless.” “When we two die,” said her man, “the roses will make us a grave and watch over us.” As he spoke a whole shower of petals fell from the trees. “Did no one pass, just then?” said his wife.