a red, red rose of Sharon--with your dove's eyes, your little
white teeth like a flock of even sheep and your sweet, pretty
lips like a thread of scarlet."

"Why, Uncle Martin!" exclaimed the girl, a trifle puzzled by the
intensity of his quiet tone, and stressing their relationship
ever so lightly. "You're almost a poet."

"You mean old King Solomon was," he retrieved himself quickly.
"Don't you ever read the Bible?"

"I didn't know you did!"

"Oh, your old Uncle reads a little of everything," he returned
with a reassuring commonplaceness of manner. He was thunderstruck
at his outburst. Never had he had occasion to talk in that vein.
He remembered how blunt he had been with the older Rose twenty
years before--how he had jumped to the point at the start and
landed safely; clinched his wooing, as he had since realized, by
calling her his Rose of Sharon, and now he was saying the same
thing over again, but, oh, how differently. If only he were
thirty-four today, and unmarried!

"You always were the most wonderful person," beamed Rose,
completely at her ease once more, "I used to simply adore you,
and I'm beginning to adore you again."

"That's because you don't know what a glum old grouch I really
am."