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The issue of this first contest was decided the next day by Fontenette, still on his bed of convalescence. “Can I raise enough money in yo’ office to go at France?”

“You can raise twice enough, Fontenette, if it’s to try to bring back some new business.”

“Well–yes, ’tis for that. Of co’se, besides–“

“Yes, I know: of course.”

“But tha’z what puzzle’ me. What I’m going do with that house heah, whilse I’m yondeh! I wou’n’ sell it–ah no! I wou’n’ sell one of those roses! An’ no mo’ I wou’n’ rent it. Tha’s a monument, that house heah, you know?”

“Yes, I know.” He never found out how well I knew.

“Fontenette, I’ll tell you what to do with it.”

“No, you don’t need; I know whad thad is. An’ thaz the same I want–me. Only–you thing thad wou’n’ be hasking her too much troub’?”

“No, indeed. There’s nothing else you could name that she’d be so glad to do.”

When I told Senda I had said that, the tears stood in her eyes. “Ah, sat vass ri-ight! O, sare shall neveh a veed be in sat karten two dayss oldt! An’ sose roses–sey shall be pairfect ever’ vun!”

XXIV

As perfect as roses every one were her words kept. And Fontenette got his new business but could not come back that year, nor the second, nor the third. The hither-side of his affairs he assigned for the time to a relative, a very young fellow, but ever so capable–“a hustler,” as our fat friend would say in these days. We missed the absentee constantly, but forgave his detention the easier because incidentally he was clearing up a matter of Senda’s over there, in which certain displeased kindred had overreached her. Also because of his letters to her, which she so often did us the honor to show us.

The first few were brief, formal and colorless; but after some time they began to take on grace after grace, until at length we had to confess that to have known him only as we had known him hitherto would have been to have been satisfied with the reverse of the tapestry, and never fully to have seen the excellence of his mind or the modest nobility of his spirit. Frequently we felt very sure we saw also that no small share of their captivating glow was reflected from Senda’s replies–of which she never would tell us a word. The faults in his written English were surprisingly few, and to our minds only the more endeared it and him. Maybe we were not judicial critics.

Yet we could pass strictures, and as the months lengthened out into years these winged proxies stirred up, on our side of the street, a profound and ever-growing impatience. O, yes, every letter was a garden of beautiful thoughts, still; but think of it! pansies where roses might have been; and a garden wherein–to speak figuratively–the nightingale never sang.

On a certain day of All Saints, the fourth after the scourge, Senda sat at tea with us. Our mood was chastened, but peaceful. We had come from visiting at the sunset hour the cemetery where in the morning the two women and our old nurse had decked the tombs of our dead with flowers. I had noticed that at no tomb front were these tokens piled more abundantly, or more beautifully or fragrantly, than at those of Flora and the entomologist; it was always so. I had remarked this on the spot, and Senda, with her rearranging touch still caressing their splendid masses, replied,

“So?–vell–I hope siss shall mine vork and mine pleassure be until mineself I shall fade like se floweh.”

I inwardly resented the speech, but said nothing. I suppose it was over my head.

Now, at the table, she explained as to certain costly blooms about which I had inquired, that they were Fontenette’s special offering, for which he always sent the purchase money ahead of time and with detailed requests. Whereat, remembering how she had formerly glozed and gilded the entomologist’s unthrift, I remarked, one-fourth in play, three-fourths in earnest,