"What _is_ a night-blooming cereal?" asked Mr. Welles, patient of the
verbose by-play of his companions that never got anybody anywhere.

What an old dear Mr. Welles was! thought Marise. It was like having the
sweetest old uncle bestowed on you as a pendant to dear Cousin Hetty.

". . . -eus, not -eal," murmured Marsh; "not that I know any more than you
what it is."

Marise felt suddenly wrought upon by the mildness of the spring air,
the high, tuneful shrillness of the frogs' voices, the darkness, sweet
and thick. She would not amuse them; no, she would really tell them,
move them. She chose the deeper intonations of her voice, she selected
her words with care, she played upon her own feeling, quickening it into
genuine emotion as she spoke. She would make them feel it too.

"It is a plant of the cactus family, as native to America as is Ashley's
peculiar sense of beauty which you won't acknowledge. It is as ugly to
look at, the plant is, all spines and thick, graceless, fleshy pads; as
ugly as Ashley life looks to you. And this crabbed, ungainly
plant-creature is faithfully, religiously tended all the year around by
the wife of a farmer, because once a year, just once, it puts forth a
wonderful exotic flower of extreme beauty. When the bud begins to show
its color she sends out word to all her neighbors to be ready. And we
are all ready. For days, in the back of our minds as we go about our
dull, routine life, there is the thought that the cereus is near to
bloom. Nelly and her grim husband hang over it day by day, watching it
slowly prepare for its hour of glory. Sometimes when they cannot decide
just the time it will open, they sit up all through a long night, hour
after hour of darkness and silence, to make sure that it does not bloom