Inkling Explorations~Amy and Laurie

It's time for another Inkling Explorations Link-Up over at Heidi's blog, Sharing the Journey.  The subject for this month is Roses in book or film.  I've chosen a scene from Little Women. I really wanted to do something from a less well-known book, but I simply couldn't think of anything else, so this is what we've got.  :)

     Valrosa well deserved its name, for, in that climate of perpetual summer, roses blossomed everywhere.  They overhung the archway, thrust themselves between the bars of the great gate with a sweet welcome to passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon-trees and feathery palms up to the villa on the hill.  every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom; every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers, and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty.  Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean, and the white-walled city on its shore.

     "This is a regular honeymoon Paradise, isn't it?  Did you ever see such roses?" asked Amy, pausing on the terrace to enjoy the view, and a luxurious whiff of perfume that came wandering by.

     "No, nor felt such thorns," returned Laurie, with his thumb in his mouth, after a vain attempt to capture a solitary scarlet flower that grew just beyond his reach.

 

     "Try lower down, and pick those that have no thorns," said Amy, gathering three of the tiny cream-colored ones that starred the wall behind her.  She put them in his button-hole, as a peace-offering, and he stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy, when imaginative young men find significance in trifles, and food for romance everywhere.  He had thought of Jo in reaching after the thorny red rose, for vivid flowers became her, and she had often worn ones like that from the greenhouse at home.  The pale roses Amy gave him were the sort that the Italians lay in dead hands, never in bridal wreaths, and, for a moment, he wondered if the omen was for Jo or for himself; but the next instant his American common-sense got the better of sentimentality, and he laughed a heartier laugh than Amy had heard since he came.

     "It's good advice; you'd better take it and save your fingers," she said, thinking her speech amused him.

     "Thank you, I will," he answered in jest, and a few months later he did it in earnest.

[Have you ever noticed the two-fold meaning behind Amy's remark, "Try lower down, and pick those that have not thorns"?  She didn't mean anything other than what she said, of course, but the double meaning is clear nonetheless, "Try pursuing the younger sister, the sweeter one who isn't so prickly."  Haha.  I love the subtle reference to Jo being the rose with thorns, and Amy the one without.  It's just clever, don't you think?]