mysterious being, and streaks and shadows, had some meaning in each of
them.

The two girls, when they next ascended the hill, saw the strange flower,
and Rose admired it, and wondered at it, but stood at a distance, without
showing an attraction towards it, rather an undefined aversion, as if she
thought it might be a poison flower; at any rate she would not be inclined
to wear it in her bosom. Sibyl Dacy examined it closely, touched its
leaves, smelt it, looked at it with a botanist's eye, and at last remarked
to Rose, "Yes, it grows well in this new soil; methinks it looks like a
new human life."

"What is the strange flower?" asked Rose.

"The _Sanguinea sanguinissima_" said Sibyl.

It so happened about this time that poor Aunt Keziah, in spite of her
constant use of that bitter mixture of hers, was in a very bad state of
health. She looked all of an unpleasant yellow, with bloodshot eyes; she
complained terribly of her inwards. She had an ugly rheumatic hitch in her
motion from place to place, and was heard to mutter many wishes that she
had a broomstick to fly about upon, and she used to bind up her head with
a dishclout, or what looked to be such, and would sit by the kitchen fire
even in the warm days, bent over it, crouching as if she wanted to take
the whole fire into her poor cold heart or gizzard,--groaning regularly
with each breath a spiteful and resentful groan, as if she fought
womanfully with her infirmities; and she continually smoked her pipe, and
sent out the breath of her complaint visibly in that evil odor; and
sometimes she murmured a little prayer, but somehow or other the evil and
bitterness, acridity, pepperiness, of her natural disposition overcame the