Miss Caroline had been overcome with grief since her boyfriend deserted her. But later a rose was delivered to her on every Saturday night, which brought her back to her normal life. Who was sending the flowers? Read on and find out.

    Every Saturday night, all through that lazy spring, I used to take a rose to Miss Caroline Wellford. Every Saturday night, rain or shine, at exactly eight o’clock.
     It was always the best rose in the shop. I would watch Old Man Olsen nest it tenderly in green tissue paper and fern. Then I would take the narrow box and pedal furiously through the quiet streets and deliver the rose to Miss Caroline. In those days, after school and on Saturdays, I worked as delivery boy for Olsen the florist（种花人）. The job paid only three dollars a week, but that was a lot for a teen-ager then.
     From the beginning there was something a little strange about those roses —or rather, about the circumstances under which I delivered them.¹ The night the first one was sent I pointed out to Mr. Olsen that he had forgotten the card.
     He peered at me through his glasses like a benevolent gnome. “There isn’t any card, James.” He never called me Jimmy. “And furthermore the — uh —party sending this flower wants it done as quietly as possible. So keep it under your hat, will you?²”
     I was glad Miss Caroline was getting a flower, because we all felt sorry for her. As everybody in our small town knew, the worst of all fates had befallen Miss Caroline. She had been jilted（抛弃）.
     For years she had been as good as engaged to Jeffrey Pinniman, one of the ablest young bachelors in town. She had waited while he got himself through medical school. ³ She was still waiting when, halfway through his internship（实习医师期）, Dr. Penniman fell in love with a younger, prettier girl and married her.
     It was almost a scandal. My mother said that all men were brutes and that Jeffrey Penniman deserved to be horse-whipped. My father said, on the contrary, that it was the right — no, the sacred duty — of every man to marry the prettiest girl who would have him.
     The girl Jeffrey Penniman married was a beauty, all right. Her name was Christine Marlowe, and she came from a big city. She must have had an uncomfortable time in our town, because naturally the women despised（鄙视） her and said unkind things about her.
     As for poor Miss Caroline, the effect on her was disastrous. For six months she had shut herself up in her house, stopped leading her Girl Scout troop, given up all civic activities. She even refused to play the organ at church anymore.
      Miss Caroline wasn’t old or unattractive, but she seemed determined to turn herself into an eccentric old maid. She looked like a ghost that night when I delivered the first rose. “Hello, Jimmy,” she said listlessly. When I handed her the box, she looked startled — “For me?”
     Again the next Saturday, at exactly the same time, I found myself delivering another rose to Miss Caroline. And the next Saturday yet another. The third time she opened the door too quickly that I knew she must have been waiting. There was a little color in her cheeks, now, and her hair no longer looked so straggly （散乱的）.
     The morning after my fourth trip to her house, Miss Caroline played the organ again in church. The rose, I saw, was pinned to her blouse. She held her head high; she did not glance once at the pew（教堂的长凳）where Dr. Penniman sat with his beautiful bride. What courage, my mother said, what character!
     Week after week I delivered the rose, and gradually Miss Caroline resumed her normal life. There was something proud about her now, something defiant （蔑视的）almost — the attitude of a woman who may have suffered an outward defeat, but who knows inwardly that she is still cherished and loved.
     The night came, eventually, when I made my final trip to Miss Caroline’s house, I said, as I handed her the box, “This is the last time I’ll bring this, Miss Caroline. We’re moving away next week. But Mr. Olsen says he’ll keep sending the flowers.”
     She hesitated. Then she said, “Come in for a minute, Jimmy.”
     She led me into her prim（整洁的）sitting room. From the mantel（壁炉架）she took a model of a sailing ship, exquisitely（精巧地）carved. “This was my grandfather’s,” she said. “I’d like you to have it. You’ve brought me great happiness, Jimmy — you and your roses.”
     She opened the box, touched the delicate petals “They say so much, though they are silent. They speak to me of other Saturday nights, happy ones. They tell me that he, too, is lonely…” She bit her lip, as if she had said too much. “You’d better go now, Jimmy. Go!”
     Clutching my ship model, I fled to my bicycle. Back at the shop, I did what I had never had the nerve to do. I looked in the file where Mr. Olsen kept his untidy records, and I found what I was looking for. “Penniman,” it said, in Mr. Olsen’s crabbed（潦草的）script. “Fifty-two American Beauties — 25c. Total: $13. Paid in advance.”
     Well, I thought to myself. Well!
     The years went by, and one day I came again to Olsen’s flower shop. Nothing had changed. Old Man Olsen was making a corsage（小花束）of gardenias, just as he used to do.
     We talked awhile, my old boss and I. Then I said, “Whatever became of Miss Caroline? You remember — she got the roses.”
     “Miss Caroline?” He nodded. “Why, she married George Halsey — owns the drugstore. Fine fellow. They have twins.”
     “Oh!” I said, a bit surprised. Then I decided to show Mr. Olsen how smart I had been. “D’you suppose,” I said, “that Mrs. Penniman ever knew her husband was sending flowers to his old flame?”
     Mr. Olsen sighed. “James, you never were very bright. Jeffrey Penniman didn’t send them. He never even knew about’em.”
     I stared at him. “Who did, then?”
     “A lady,” said Mr. Olsen. He put the gardenias carefully into a box. “A lady who said she wasn’t going to sit around watching Miss Caroline make a martyr of herself at her expense.⁴ Christine Penniman sent those roses.”
     “Now there,” he said, closing the lid with finality, “was a woman for you!”

(1026 words)