They set the roots of Rosa Indica now into a vase--such a vase!
the royal blue of Sevres, if you please, and with border and
scroll work and all kinds of wonders and glories painted on it and
gilded on it, and standing four feet high if it stood one inch! I
could never tell you the feelings of Rosa if I wrote a thousand
pages. Her heart thrilled so with ecstasy that she almost dropped
all her petals, only her vanity came to her aid, and helped her to
control in a measure her emotions. The gardeners broke off a good
deal of mould about her roots, and they muttered one to another
something about her dying of it. But Rosa thought no more of that
than a pretty lady does when her physician tells her she will die
of tight lacing; not she! She was going to be put into that Sevres
vase.
This was enough for her, as it is enough for the lady that she is
going to be put into a hundred-guinea ball gown.
In she went. It was certainly a tight fit, as the gown often is,
and Rosa felt nipped, strained, bruised, suffocated. But an old
proverb has settled long ago that pride feels no pain, and perhaps
the more foolish the pride the less is the pain that is felt--for
the moment.
They set her well into the vase, putting green moss over her
roots, and then they stretched her branches out over a gilded
trelliswork at the back of the vase.
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