“That Colton girl,” cried Lute. “That Mabel Colton,” said Dorinda. “Miss Colton? She has been here? this afternoon.” “Um-hm,” Dorinda nodded emphatically. “She stayed in your ma's room 'most an hour.” “'Twas fifty-three minutes,” declared Lute. “I timed her by the clock. And she fetched a great, big bouquet. Comfort says she--” I waited to hear no more, but went into Mother's room. The little bed chamber was fragrant with the perfume of flowers. A cluster of big Jacqueminot roses drooped their velvety petaled heads over the sides of the blue and white pitcher on the bureau. Mother loved flowers and I frequently brought her the old fashioned posies from Dorinda's little garden or wild blossoms from the woods and fields. But roses such as these were beyond my reach now-a-days. They grew in greenhouses, not in the gardens of country people. Mother did not move as I entered and I thought she was asleep. But as I bent over the roses she turned on the pillow and spoke. “Aren't they beautiful, Roscoe?” she said. “Yes,” I answered. “They are beautiful.” “Do you know who brought them to me?” “Yes, Mother. Lute told me.” “She did call, you see. She kept her word. It was kind of her, wasn't it?” I sat down in the rocking chair by the window. “Well,” I asked, after a moment, “what did she say? Did she condescend to pity her pauper neighbors?” “Roscoe!” “Did she express horrified sympathy and offer to call your case to the attention of her cousin in charge of the Poor Ward in the City General Hospital, like that woman from the Harniss hotel last summer?” “Boy! How can you!” “Oh, well; I am a jealous beast, Mother; I admit it. But I have not been able to bring you flowers like that and it galls me to think that others can. They don't deserve to have all the beautiful things in life, while the rest of us have none.” “But it isn't her fault that she has them, is it? And it was kind to share them with us.” “I suppose so. Well, what did she say to you? Dorinda says she was with you nearly an hour. What did you and she talk about? She did not offer charity, did she?” “Do you think I should have accepted it, if she had? Roscoe, I have never seen you so prejudiced as you are against our new neighbors. It doesn't seem like you, at all. And if her father and mother are like Miss Mabel, you are very wrong. I like her very much.” “You would try to like any one, Mother.” “I did not have to try to like her. And I was a little prejudiced, too, at first. She was so wealthy, and an only child; I feared she might be conceited and spoiled. But she isn't.” “Not conceited! Humph!” “No, not really. At first she seemed a trifle distant, and I thought her haughty; but, afterward, when her strangeness and constraint had worn away, she was simple and unaffected and delightful. And she is very pretty, isn't she.” “Yes.”