Even Mr. Kendrick's own room,
filled though it was with costly furniture, its walls hung with
portraits and heavy oil paintings, after the fashion of the rich man who
wants his home comfortable and attractive but does not know how to make
it so, was by no means homelike.
"This is good of you--this is good of you," the old man said happily, as
they approached his couch. He held out his hands to them, and when
Roberta presented her roses, exclaimed over them like a pleased child,
and sent his man hurrying about to find receptacles for them. He lay
looking from the flowers to the faces while he talked, as if he did not
know which were the more refreshing to his eyes, weary of the
surroundings to which they had been so long accustomed.
"These will be the first thing Dick will spy when he comes to-morrow,"
he prophesied. "I never saw a fellow so fond of roses. The last time he
was down he found time to tell me about somebody's old garden up there
in Eastman, where they have some kind of wonderful, old-fashioned rose
with the sweetest fragrance he ever knew. He had one in his coat; the
sight of it took me back to my boyhood.
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