"Because dewless!" replied Mabel, with profound gravity. "It is the
tearful heart that gives out the sweetest fragrance."

"I have more faith in sunshine," interrupted Rosa, a tinge of
contempt in her smile and accent. "Or--to drop metaphors, at which
I always bungle--it is my belief that it is easy for happy people to
be good. All this talk about the sweetness of crushed blossoms,
throwing their fragrance from the wounded part, and the riven
sandal-tree, and the blessed uses of adversity, is outrageous
balderdash, according to my doctrine. A buried thing is but one
degree better than a dead one. What it is the fashion of poets and
sentimentalists to call perfume, is the odor of incipient decay."

"You are illustrating your position by means of my poor oriental
pearl," remonstrated Mabel, playfully, wresting the hand that was
beating the life and whiteness out of the floweret upon the marble
top of the beaufet. "Take this hardy geant de batailles, instead. My
bouquet must have a cluster of pearls for a heart."

"What a fierce crimson!" Frederic remarked upon the widely-opened
rose Miss Tazewell received in place of the delicate bud. "That must
be the 'hue angry, yet brave,' which, Mr. George Herbert asserts,
'bids the rash gazer wipe his eye.'"

"More poetical nonsense!" said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold
"geant" to pieces down to the bare stem, "unless he meant to be
comic, and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near
the bush, and ran a thorn into the pupil."