Explore "Whose Wife was she?" by Helen Hunt Jackson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I was on my knees before my chrysanthemum-bed, looking at each little round tight disk of a bud, and trying to believe that it would be a snowy flower in two weeks. In two weeks my cousin Annie Ware was to be married: if my white chrysanthemums would only understand and make haste! I was childish enough to tell them so; but the childishness came of love, -- of my exceeding, my unutterable love for Annie Ware; if flowers have souls, the chrysanthemums understood me.
A sharp, quick roll of wheels startled me. I lifted my head. The wheels stopped at our gate; a hurried step came down the broad garden-path, and almost before I had had time to spring to my feet, Dr. Fearing had taken both my hands in his, had said, -- "Annie Ware has the fever," -- had turned, had gone, had shut the garden gate, and the same sharp quick roll of wheels told that he was far on his way to the next sufferer.