or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean and the white-walled city on its shore.
"This is a regular honey-moon Paradise, isn't it? Did you ever see such roses?" asked Amy, pausing on the terrace to enjoy the view, and a luxurious whiff of perfume that came wandering by.
"No, nor felt such thorns," returned Laurie, with his thumb in his mouth, after a vain attempt to capture a solitary scarlet flower that grew just beyond his reach.
"Try lower down, and pick those that have no thorns," said Amy, deftly gathering three of the tiny cream-colored ones that starred the wall behind her. She put them in his button-hole, as a peace-offering, and he stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy, when imaginative young men find significance in trifles, and food for romance everywhere. He had thought of Jo in reaching after the thorny red rose,—for vivid flowers became her,—and she had often worn ones like that, from the green-house at home. The pale roses Amy gave him were the sort that the Italians lay in dead hands,—never in bridal wreaths,—and, for a moment, he wondered if the omen was for Jo or for himself. But the next instant his American common-sense got the better of sentimentality, and he laughed a heartier laugh than Amy had heard since he came.
