While I was shaving, he said in his usual wooden way: "Begging your pardon, sir, I thought you might like to send Mrs.Connor a few flowers, so I took upon myself to cut some roses, first thing this morning, with the dew on them." Of course I cut myself and the blood flowed profusely.
"Why the dickens do you spring things like that on people while they're shaving ?" I cried.
"Very sorry, sir," said he, solicitous with sponge and towel.
"All the same, Marigold," said I, "you've solved a puzzle that has kept me awake since early dawn.

We'll go out as soon as I'm dressed and we'll send her every rose in the garden." I have an acre or so of garden behind the house of which I have not yet spoken, save incidentally--for it was there that just a year ago poor Althea Fenimore ate her giant strawberries on the last afternoon of her young life; and a cross-grained old misanthropist, called Timbs, attends to it and lavishes on the flowers the love which, owing, I suspect, to blighted early affection, he denies to mankind.

I am very fond of my garden and am especially interested in my roses.

Do you know an exquisitely pink rose--the only true pink--named Mrs.George Norwood?
...

I bring myself up with a jerk.