"Ah, true roses are tricky," she said, a little sourly. But then she shook back her hair. "Or so I've heard. I've never been...at least, before this—” and she gestured to the boughs that never quite forced them to duck, “you didn’t look at— I mean, you wouldn’t have— That is, I wasn’t the sort to be given any flowers."

When I shirk my chores to go venturing, Momma Londie’s always mad as all, and Dad Bray tuts and clucks when he sees me come home all muddy and with burrs in my hair, and he takes up the whomping stick and looks all hardeyed as a father ought to, but then there’s us gone down to the root cellar, him hitting the wall with the stick and me squeaking an Ow every once and somewhen to fool Momma Londie. He don’t whomp me so long as I got a good story for him.