den; flowers I can
show you grown from clippings from every part of the world. If I do say
so, for a sausage-maker who never went to school two years in his life
it ain't so bad. I got a lily-pond, Miss Renie, they come from all over
to see. By myself I designed it."

"It must be grand, Mr. Hochenheimer."

"On Sunday, Miss Renie, I like for my boys and girls from the factory to
come up to my place and make themselves at home. You should see my old
mother how she fixes for them! I wish you could see them boys and girls,
and old men and women. In a sausage-factory they don't get much time to
listen to birds and water when it falls into a fountain. I wish, Miss
Renie, you could see them with the flowers. I--well, I don't know how to
say it; but I wish you could see them for yourself."

"They like it?"

"Like it! I tell you it's the greatest pleasure I get out of my place. I
wish, instead of my fine house, the city would let me build my factory
for them right in the garden."

"On such a stylish street they wouldn't ever let you, Mr. Hochenheimer."

"Me and my mother ain't much for style, Miss Renie. Honest, you'd be
surprised, but with my fine house I don't even keep an automobile. My
mother, she's old, Miss Renie, and won't go in one. Alone it ain't no
pleasure; and when I don't walk down to my factory the street-cars is
good enough."

"You should take it easier, Mr. Hochenheimer."

"All our lives, Miss Renie, we've been so busy, my mother and me, I tell
her we got to be learnt--like children got to be learnt to walk--how to
enjoy ourselves. We--we need somebody young--somebody like you in the
house, Miss Renie--young and so pretty, and full of life, and--and so
sweet."

She gave a gauzy laugh. "Honest, it must seem like a dream to have a
rose-garden right on the place you live."

"I wish you could see, Miss Renie, a new Killarney my gardener showed me
in the hothouse yesterday before I left--white-and-pink blend; he got
the clipping from Jamaica. It's a pale pink in the heart like the first
minute when the sun rises; and then it gets pinker and pinker toward
the outside petals, till it just bursts out as red as the sun when it's
ready to set."

"And those beautiful little tan roses you sent me, Mr. Hochenheimer;
I--"

"Ah, Miss Renie, the clipping from those sunset roses comes from Italy;
but now I call them Renie Roses, if--if you'll excuse me. I tell you,
Miss Renie, you look just enough like 'em to be r