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"'Is there anything you want, Jane? If there is, speak up and make it known.' And I says: 'The rest of you can take what you want of the furniture, and if there's anything left, that can be my part. If there ain't anything left, there'll be no quarrelin'; for there's jest one thing I want, and that's grandmother's rose.' "They all laughed, and sister Mary says, 'Ain't that jest like Jane?' and brother Joe says, says he: "'You shall have it, Jane, and further than that, I'll see to the transplantin'.' "That very evenin' he come over, and I showed him where I wanted the rose to stand. He dug 'way down into the clay--there's nothin' a rose likes better, child, than good red clay--and got a wheelbarrer load o' soil from the woods, and we put that in first and set the roots in it and packed 'em good and firm, first with woods' soil, then with clay, waterin' it all the time. When we got through, I says: 'Now, you pretty thing you, if you could come all the way from Virginia in a old iron kittle, you surely won't mind bein' moved from father's place to mine. Now you've got to live and bloom for me same as you did for mother.' "You needn't laugh, child. That rose knew jest what I said, and did jest what I told it to do. It looked like everything favored us, for it was early in the spring, things was beginnin' to put out leaves, and the next day was cloudy and cool. Then it began to rain, and rained for thirty-six hours right along. And when the sun come out, grandmother's rose come out, too. Not a leaf on it ever withered, and me and my children and my children's children have gethered flowers from it all these years. Folks say I'm foolish about it, and I reckon I am. I've outlived most o' the people I love, but I don't want to outlive this rose. We've both weathered many a hard winter, and two or three times it's been winter-killed clean to the ground, and I thought I'd lost it. Honey, it was like losin' a child. But there's never been a winter yet hard enough to kill the life in that rose's root, and I trust there never will be while I live, for spring wouldn't be spring to me without grandmother's rose." Tall, straight, and strong it stood, this oft transplanted pilgrim rose; and whether in bloom or clothed only in its rich green foliage, you saw at a glance that it was a flower of royal lineage. When spring covered it with buds and full blown blossoms of pink, the true rose color, it spoke of queens' gardens
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