A DRIED-UP ROMANCE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 26, 1 July 1909, Page 1038

A DRIED-UP ROMANCE

One of the longest delayed proposals on record is related in a French story of a shy young subaltern who was ordered away to the wars. Not daring to speak, he sent a nosegay of yellow roses tp the girl he loved, wifc'i a little note inside begging her, if she returned his love, to wear one of the flowers in her breast that night at the ball. She appeared without it, and he went away broken-hearted. Years afterward, when he was a lame old general, he again met his old love, now a white-haired widow. Ono day his old sweethearb gently asked him why he had never married. ' Madam,' he answered, somewhat sternly, ' you ought to know best. If you had not refused to answer that note in the bouquet of yellow roses I might have bee a a happier man.' 'The note in the bouquet?' she repeated, growing pale. She opened an old cabinet and took out from a drawer a shrivelled bouquet of what had been yellow roses, among whose leafless stalks lurked a scrap of paper yellow with age. 'See? I never had your note,' she .said, holding the bouquet up. 'If I had, I would not have answered it as you fancied.' ' Then answer it now,' said the gallait old soldier. And the long-delayed proposal was accepted at last.