"Well, grandmother didn't die of homesickness, nor the rose either. The transplantin' was good for both of 'em. She lived to be ninety years old, and when she died the house wouldn't hold the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that come to the funeral. And here's her rose growin' and bloomin' yet, like there wasn't any such things in the world as old age and death. And every spring I gether a basketful o' these pink roses and lay 'em on her grave over yonder in the old buryin'-ground.
"Some folks has family china and family silver that they're mighty proud of. Martha Crawford used to have a big blue and white bowl that belonged to her great-grandmother, and she thought more o' that bowl than she did of everything else in the house. Milly Amos had a set o' spoons that'd been in her family for four generations and was too precious to use; and I've got my family rose, and it's jest as dear to me as china and silver are to other folks. I ricollect after father died and the estate had to be divided up, and sister Mary and brother Joe and the rest of 'em was layin' claim to the claw-footed mahogany table and the old secretary and mother's cherry sideboard and such things as that, and brother Joe turned around and says to me, says he:
"'Is there anything you want, Jane? If there is, speak up and make it known.' And I says: 'The rest of you can take what you want of the furniture, and if there's anything left, that can be my part. If there ain't anything left, there'll be no quarrelin'; for there's jest one thing I want, and that's grandmother's rose.'
"They all laughed, and sister Mary says, 'Ain't that jest like Jane?' and brother Joe says, says he:
"'You shall have it, Jane, and further than that, I'll see to the transplantin'.'
"That very evenin' he come over, and I showed him where I wanted the rose to stand. He dug 'way down into the clay--there's nothin' a rose likes better, child, than good red clay--and got a wheelbarrer load o' soil from the woods, and we put that in first and set the roots in it and packed 'em good and firm, first with woods' soil, then with clay, waterin' it all the time. When we got through, I says: 'Now, you pretty thing you, if you could come all the way from Virginia in a old iron kittle, you surely won't mind bein' moved from father's place to mine. Now you've got to live and bloom for me same as you did for mother.'