The story?  Well, there really isn’t any, as we’ve warned you.  Rose had been pretty then in much the same delicate way that Floss was pretty now.  They were to have been married.  Rose’s mother fell ill, Floss and Al were little more than babies.  The marriage was put off.  The illness lasted six months—­a year—­two years—­became interminable.  The breach into which Rose had stepped closed about her and became a prison.  The man had waited, had grown impatient, finally rebelled.  He had fled, probably, to marry a less encumbered lady.  Rose had gone dully on, caring for the household, the children, the sick woman.  In the years that had gone by since then Rose had forgiven him his faithlessness.  She only remembered that he had been wont to call her his Roeschen, his Rosebud, his pretty flower (being a German gentleman).  She only recalled the wonder of having been first in some one’s thoughts—­she who now was so hopelessly, so irrevocably last.

As she sat there in her kitchen, wearing her soap-stained and faded blue gingham, and the dust-cap pushed back at a rakish angle, a simpering little smile about her lips, she was really very much like the disappointed old maids you used to see so cruelly pictured in the comic valentines.  Had those letters obsessed her a little more strongly she might have become quite mad, the Freudians would tell you.  Had they held less for her, or had she not been so completely the household’s slave, she might have found a certain solace and satisfaction in viewing the Greek profile and marcel wave of the most-worshipped movie star.  As it was, they were her ballast, her refuge, the leavening yeast in the soggy dough of her existence.  This man had wanted her to be his wife.  She had found favour in his eyes.  She was certain that he still thought of her, sometimes, and tenderly, regretfully, as she thought of him.  It helped her to live.  Not only that, it made living possible.

A clock struck, a window slammed, or a street-noise smote her ear sharply.  Some sound started her out of her reverie.  Rose jumped, stared a moment at the letters in her lap, then hastily, almost shamefacedly, sorted them (she knew each envelope by heart) tied them, placed them in their box and bore them down the hail.  There, mounting her chair, she scrubbed the top shelf with her soapy rag, placed the box in its corner, left the hall closet smelling of cleanliness, with never a hint of lavender to betray its secret treasure.

Were Rose to die and go to Heaven, there to spend her days thumbing a golden harp, her hands, by force of habit, would, drop harp-strings at quarter to six, to begin laying a celestial and unspotted table-cloth for supper.  Habits as deeply rooted as that must hold, even in after-life.