A few coloured prints, culled from garden magazines,
were tacked on the wall, and these, without exception, represented
blossoms of a miraculous splendour and size. In Sarah's straitened
and intolerant soul a single passion had budded and expanded into
fulfillment. Stern to all mortal things, to flowers alone she softened
and grew gentle. From the front steps to the back, the kitchen
was filled with them. Boxes, upturned flour barrels, corners of
china-shelves and window-sills, showed bowers of luxuriant leaf and
blossom. Her calla lilies had long been famous in the county; they
had taken first prizes at innumerable fairs, and whenever there was a
wedding or a funeral in the neighbourhood, the tall green stalks were
clipped bare of bloom. Many were the dead hands that had been laid in
the earth clasping her lilies. This thought had been for years the chief
solace in her life, and she was accustomed to refer to it in the heat
of religious debates, as though it offered infallible proof of her
contention. After calla lilies, fuchias and tuberoses did best in her
hands, and she had nursed rare night blooming cereus for seven years
in the hope that it would arrive at perfection the following June.
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