had never occurred to him to put her story on paper. Her father had been a baker, successful enough to buy a small house on several acres of farming land. Emma, when it became certain that she was not likely to marry, began to raise dahlias on a part of this land. He could see her now, her low bosom deflected over her corset, as she worked in a brown Mother Hubbard in her garden, a sunbonnet protecting her head.
Emma Flummerfelt began to experiment with dahlias when she was thirty. At the age of thirty-five she had become an ardent collector of these bulbs and an expert at their culture. She corresponded with all the known dahlia fanciers of America and England and exchanged varieties with them. By the time she was forty her garden during the blossoming season was one of the show places of the town and, through her assiduity in exchange and purchase, it had achieved an almost international reputation.
When she was forty-three a strange incident occurred. She was visited by a Colonel Redwood of Sussex, retired, late of some Anglo-Indian regiment. Colonel Redwood looked past the fat, middle-aged little woman in her sunbonnet to the glory of the garden and without hesitation made her a proposal of marriage. Emma Flummerfelt may have been
