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Maybe I'll catch a ride, too." They said good-night, and Newell was walking down the path where clove-pinks were at their sweetest, when he turned to speak again. Dorcas, forgetful of him, had stretched her arms upward in a yawn that seemed to envelop the whole of her. As she stood there in the moonlight, her tall figure loomed like that of a priestess offering worship.
A sweet and crushed mixture they were, pansies, clove-pinks, mignonette, bleeding hearts, bachelors' buttons, all short stemmed and minus any saving touch of green, but true love offerings for all that. Wordless gifts most of them, prim little bunches, hot from tight clasping in chubby hands, shyly and swiftly deposited on "Teacher's desk" when the back of that divinity was turned.
She had thought much of the red shoes and the silver clasps, but she had thought nothing at all of him. "You are not too proud to be paid to-day?" he said, giving her a silver franc; he would not alarm her with any more gold; she thanked him, and slipped it in her little leathern pouch, and went on sorting some clove-pinks. "You do not seem to remember me?" he said, with a little sadness.
Be this as it may, in order to live up to the dial, the beds that form its court must be consistently clothed for cannas, coleus, and beans, read peonies, Madonna lilies, sweet-william, clove-pinks, and hollyhocks, which latter the seed bed I hope will duly furnish.
When I say "midsummer," how many pretty things it means, woods at their freshest and greenest, meadows sweet with newly cut hay, cinnamon-roses in the hedges and water-lilies in the ponds, bees buzzing in and out of the clove-pinks and larkspurs which edge the beds of cabbages and carrots in the kitchen-garden, a humming-bird at work in the scarlet trumpets of the honeysuckle on the porch, everywhere the sense of fullness and growth, with no shadow as yet of rankness or decay.
We'd put plain white straw matting on the floors, hang muslin curtains at the windows, and use the simplest willow furniture to be had. The windows should be open every minute, and there would be bowls of roses about only I'd rather it would be sweet-williams or clove-pinks. Sally, don't you adore the old-fashioned clove-pinks, with their dear, spicy smell?
A few wet hens wandered aimlessly by the doorstep; a tiny bed of white clove-pinks and tall white phlox exhaled a homely welcome as the lame man hobbled up the steps, pulled the leather latchstring, and entered. In the kitchen an old Breton woman, chopping herbs, looked up at him out of aged eyes, shaking her head under its white coiffe. "It is nearly noon," she said.
The spring shrubs had all spelled out their floral recitations, of course, but great clumps of peonies were spreading wide skirts of gigantic bloom, like dancers courtesying low on the stage of summer, and shafts of green-white Yucca lilies and Japan lilies and clove-pinks still remained in their school of bloom.
And on each occasion of meeting them, that carved lily and those graven clove-pinks, like the three roses in the Square of Purgatory, have shed a charm over the street, given me a pleasure more subtle than that derived from any bed of real lilies, or pot of real clove-pinks, or bush of real roses; colouring and scenting the street with this imaginary colour and perfume.
What train of thought has been set up? It would be hard to say. Something too vague to be perceived except as a whole impression of pleasure; a half-seen vision, doubtless, of the real flowers, of the places where they grow; perhaps even a faint reminiscence, a dust of broken and pounded fragments, of stories and songs into which roses enter, or lilies, or clove-pinks.
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