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 didn’t want to go, but after Dad said that, Mother made her. So we went after dinner when we had come home from school. Mother washed us up and put on our Sunday clothes and Dad took us in the car, and right at the front door the beautiful part started.

“There was a big wreath that nearly covered the door and it began in little blue forget-me-nots and violets and heliotrope, and it ran into white hyacinths and gold hyacinths and blue ones, and there were sprays of lavender heather and white roses and pale pink roses, and at the clear to the porch floor, the loveliest white lilies. I never bottom where it was tied with lavender chiffon that hung saw anything that was so beautiful.”

The small face lifted to Jamie’s.

“Did you ever see anything as lovely as that?” he was asked.

Jamie shook his head.

“In the living room, where, ever since I’d known her, Aunt Beth had sat in a wheel chair, it was just flowers everywhere. All our family sent them, and all the neigh bours sent them, and her church sent them, and people we’d never heard of sent them, because everybody loved Aunt Beth. Mother said she was the biggest little liar in the whole world. Days when you could see she was twisty with pain, she’d look you straight in the eye and say she was better. She was always better. And she had the funniest house. You never went to it that from somewhere she couldn’t pull out a cooky with candy on it, or red peppermint sticks, and she always had the best raisins.