ＣＡＲＥ：因为读到这篇英文小说，觉得女人真的很伟大，所以打上来，让大家看看．

    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. The job paid only three dollars a week, but that was a lot for a teenager then.

    From the  beginning there was something a litte strange about those roses- or rather,about the circustance under which  I delivered them. The night the first one was sent I poited out to Miss 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?"

   I was glad Miss Caroline was getting a flower,because we felt sorry for her.As everybody in our small town knew, the worst of all fates had befallen Miss Caroline. She had been jilted.

   For years she had been as good as engaged to Jeffrey Penniman, one of the ablest young bachelors in town.She had waited while he got himself through medical school.She was still waiting when, halfway through his internship,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 Jeffery Penniman deserved to be horsewhipped.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 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 unhandsome,but she seemed determined to turn herself into an eccentric old maid. She looked like a ghost that night 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 ncxt Saturday yet anothr. The third time she opened the door so quickly that I knew she must have been waiting. There was a litter color in her cheeks,now, and her hair no longer looked so straggly.

   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 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 almost- the attitude of a woman who may have suffered an outward 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've moving away next week.But Mr.Olsen says he'll keep sending the flowers."

   She hesitated. The she said,"Come in for a minute,Jimmy."

   She led me into her prim sitting room. From the mantel she took a model of a sailing ship,exquisitely 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 or 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 Olsen kept his untidy records,and I found what I was looking for."Penniman,"it said , in Mr.Olsen's crabbed script."Fifty-two American Beauties-245. 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 corage 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 them."

   I started 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. Christine Penniman sent those roses.

   "Now there," he said, closing the lid with finality."was a woman for you!"