GARDEN ROSES 167 



think that life in the country was not so very much 

 * more sweet than that of painted pomp/ when, 

 engaged to a dinner-party, on the third day of my 

 visit, and to enliven my scenery, I bought a Rose. 

 Only a common Rose, one from a hundred which 

 a ragged girl was hawking in the streets,^ and 

 which the swell I spoke of would have considered 

 offal — a Moss-Rosebud, with a bit of fern attached. 

 Only a twopenny Rose; but as I carried it in my 

 coat, and gazed on it, and specially when, waking 

 next morning, I saw it in my water-jug — saw it as 

 I lay in my dingy bedroom, and heard the distant 

 roar of Piccadilly instead of the thrush's song — 

 saw it, and thought of my own Roses — it seemed 

 as though they had sent to me a messenger, whom 

 they knew I loved, to bid me 'come home, come 

 home.' Then I thought of our dinner-party over- 

 night, and how my neighbour thereat, a young 

 gentleman who had nearly finished a fine fortune 

 and a strong constitution, had spoken to me of a 

 mutual friend, one of the best and cheeriest fellows 

 alive, as ' an awful duffer,' ' moped to death,' ' buried 

 alive in some dreadful hole' (dreadful hole being 



^ * Poor Peggy hawks nosegays from street to street, 

 Till — think of that, who find life so sweet — 

 She hates the smell of Roses ! ' 



—Hood. 



