You forgot."

The Lady, returning: "Oh, yes! Give me your pencil." She writes on a piece of the white wrapping-paper. "There! That is it." She stands irresolute, with the pencil at her lip. "There was something else that I seem to have forgotten."

The Florist: "Your flowers?"

The Lady: "Oh, yes, my flowers. I nearly went away without deciding. Let me see. Where are those white roses with the pink tinge on the edge of the petals?" The florist pushes the box towards her, and she looks down at the roses. "No, they won't do. They look somehow—cruel! I don't wonder he wouldn't have them. They are totally out of character. I will take those white Bride roses, too. It seems a fatality, but there really isn't anything else, and I can laugh with her about them, if it all turns out well." She talks to herself rather than the florist, who stands patient behind the counter, and repeats, dreamily, "Laugh with her!"

The Florist: "How many shall I sendt you, matam?"

The Lady: "Oh, loads. As many as you think I ought to have. I shall not have any other flowers, and I mean to toss them on the table in loose heaps. Perhaps I shall have some smilax to go with them."

The Florist: "Yes; or cypress wine."

The Lady: "No; that is too crapy and creepy. Smilax, or nothing; and yet I don't like that hard, shiny, varnishy look of smilax either. You wouldn't possibly have anything like that wild vine, it's scarcely more than a golden thread, that trails over the wayside bushes in New England? Dodder, they call it."

The Florist: "I nefer heardt off it."

The Lady: "No, but that would have been just the thing. It suggests the color of her hair; it would go with her. Well, I will have the smilax too, though I don't like it. I don't see why all the flowers should take to being so inexpressive. Send all the smilax you judge best. It's quite a long table, nine or ten feet, and I want the vine going pretty much all about it."

The Florist: "Perhaps I better sendt somebody to see?"

The Lady: "Yes, that would be the best. Good-morning."

The Florist: "Goodt—morning, matam. I will sendt rhoundt this afternoon."

The Lady: "Very well." She is at the door, and she is about to open it, when it is opened from the outside, and another lady, deeply veiled, presses hurriedly in, and passes down the shop to the counter, where the florist stands sorting the long-stemmed Bride roses in the box before him. The first lady does not go out; she lingers at the door, looking after the lady who has just come in; then, with a little hesitation, she slowly returns, as if she had forgotten something, and waits by the stove until the florist shall have attended to the new-comer.

The Second Lady, throwing back her veil, and bending over to look at the box of roses: "What beautiful roses! What do you call these?"

The Florist: "That is a new rhoce: the Pridte. It is jost oudt. It is coing to be a very bopular rhoce."

The Second Lady: "How very white it is! It seems not to have the least touch of color in it! Like snow! No; it is too cold!"

The Florist: "It iss gold-looging."

The Second Lady: "What do they use this rose for? For—for"—

The Florist: "For everything! Weddtings, theatre barties, afternoon dteas, dtinners, funerals"—

The Second Lady: "Ah, that is shocking! I can't have it, then. I want to send some flowers to a friend who has lost her only child—a young girl—and I wish it to be something expressive—characteristic—something that won't wound them with other associations. Have you