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The maiden bud is as sweet to look upon as the rose, but he who loves not merely color but perfume too I mean refreshment, emotion and edification of spirit must turn to the full-blown flower; as the rose growers of lake Moeris twine only the buds of their favorite flower into wreaths and bunches, but cannot use them for extracting the oil of imperishable fragrance; for that they need the expanded blossom.
There were exactly seventeen, full-blown and fragrant, and one small bud of promise which Peter presently removed from its vase to his button hole. The act had almost the significance of a ritual, a thing done many times with particular meaning. "Somehow," Peter said as he fastened it with a pin underneath his lapel, "seventeen years seems a shorter time to look back on than to look forward to."
In the unfolding of a bud we are wont to see, as it were, the fulfilment of a predetermined and glorious destiny; for the seed was an epitome or condensation of a full-blown plant and held within it, in some sort of potential guise, the very form which now peeps out in the young flower. Evolution suggests a prior involution or contraction and the subsequent manifestation of an innate ideal.
I don't doubt the Poor Relation thought it was all very fine, if she happened to be in the church; but if the worthy man who uttered these monstrous words monstrous in such a connection had known the ludicrous surprise, the convulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that seized upon many of the persons who were present, had guessed what a sudden flash of light it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck, the shabby, perking pretension belonging to certain social layers, so inherent in their whole mode of being, that the holiest offices of religion cannot exclude its impertinences, the good man would have given his marriage-fee twice over to recall that superb and full-blown vulgarism.
The sunshine fell hotly over her, and straight ahead the white road lay like a living thing. She stooped, gravely gathered up the books, and walked resolutely on her way, a cloud of yellow butterflies fluttering like loosened petals of full-blown buttercups about her head.
Cecil was not at all shy, and was pleased to take her place as representative lady of the house; but somehow, though every one was civil and attentive to her, she found herself effaced by the more full-blown Rosamond, accustomed to the same world as the guests; and she could not help feeling the same sense of depression as when she had to yield the head of her father's table to her step-mother.
Only a very few steps, a distance that might be bridged by a single resolute advance, had separated Partab Singh from the dignity of a full-blown independent prince, when the nerveless hands of the Ranjitgarh ruler were suddenly reinforced by the strong grasp of a British Resident upon the reins.
She had a light-coloured name with the letters so harmoniously convoluted as to be quite beyond my inferior power of pronunciation, so that if I wished to refer to her in her absence I had to indicate the one I meant by likening her to a full-blown chrysanthemum, a piece of rare jade, an ivory pagoda of unapproachable antiquity, or some other object of admitted grace.
I notice my negro servant Said is gradually expanding into a full-blown reputation, of which he is very proud. The Mussulmans pay him almost more deference than myself, and I ought to be jealous.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, flushing prettily. "I did not think you would rise so early at least, not on your first morning." He eyed her almost in bewilderment as he took the hand she was cordially extending. Could this full-blown rose of young womanhood, this startling beauty, be the slip of a timid girl he had so lightly treated three years ago? What hair, what eyes, what palpitating, sinuous grace!
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