Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/310

 "No matter; get some more, please do. I'll eat them all; really, I will."

And Amy was as good as her word. Her convalescent appetite was something prodigious.

There was another branch of shopping in which they all took equal delight. The beauty and the cheapness of the Florence flowers are a continual surprise to a stranger. Every morning after breakfast an old man came creaking up the two long flights of stairs which led to Mrs. Ashe's apartment, tapped at the door, and as soon as it opened, inserted a shabby elbow and a large flat basket full of flowers. Such flowers! Great masses of scarlet and cream-colored tulips, and white and gold narcissus, knots of roses of all shades, carnations, heavy-headed trails of wistaria, wild hyacinths, violets, deep crimson and orange ranunculus, giglios, or wild irises,—the Florence emblem, so deeply purple as to be almost black,—anemones, spring-beauties, faintly tinted wood-blooms tied in large loose nosegays, ivy, fruit blossoms,—everything