CHAPTER VII 

 ROSE COLOUR 



Oho, my love, oho, my love, and ho, the bough that shows, 

 Against the grayness of mid-Lent the colour of the rose! 



— Lizette Reese. 



IT SEEMS to me that few words register so pleasant an 

 impression as rose colour. It reminds us of all sorts 

 of pleasant things and circumstances and yet, like 

 many other words we use freely, its meaning is vague. When 

 we consider Roses themselves, we have them, 



Red as the wine of forgotten ages, 

 Yellow as gold of the sunbeams spun; 

 Pink as the gowns of Aurora's pages, 

 White as the robe of the sinless one. 



And besides, flame and saffron and blush, cherry and cream 

 and buff, crimson and scarlet — and which of these is "Rose" 

 colour? 



If one orders a plant catalogued as "rose coloured," it is 

 sure to arrive that dear besmirched hue — magenta. I have 

 no quarrel with magenta, but I do not want it when my 

 heart is set upon a delightful pink, and some spot in my 

 garden is especially designed to hold it. Magenta is the 

 skeleton in the closet of nurserymen and seedsmen and "rose 



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