"Look at Violet, slave to ornaments and passing fancies," Rose decided. She strolled in crimson jacket and tights, with high-topped boots of ruddy leather and full lace at her throat. She carried in 1 hand 16 jonquils cool and crisp in a green paper cone for Carrie who looked, and blushed, but not for Violet, or Violet's sake she blushed, Rose determined, purely because she was Carrie and Carrie in a crowd coursing, nudging, singing, joking, pinching, dancing, eating, smoking, scrapping, wondering and expecting hoping Carrie in a crowd blushed.
        What else could she do, would she, Rose would like to know.
 

"You'd never think it of her, would you?" Rose queried, lids drooping. Her lids were smooth, soft, flawless, and did not hide a fire in her brown eyes and served to heighten that intent which was not mystery but a probing beam which sent hands fumbling through draperies, placed hands flitting to throats and cheeks.          "No," Carrie stopped. Held fast in place by a clot of haranguing merchants and a wall of winking shepherds on the hire for what they seemed to beg suggestions Carrie felt it was no different, this halt, this press, than the closing of a herd about her goats, cows, sheep,  the press was the same, the smell was not.          Above a peaked green cap she spied Cleo cavorting with puppets and above her, not too high,  silken balloon hung red and yellow striped and yellow was its gondola where gaily costumed celebrants caught their lifted linen collars, their tall hats, and lifted their goblets toasting the seekers taking the town like the fountain its pool.          "No," Carrie said along her shoulder to Rose who pushed jonquils up between them  for a joke, knowing Rose, for keeping them out of some rude hairy nose, knowing Rose and her expectations and her endeavors seeing it an advantageous, even felicitous, alternative  to barking the shins or marking the belly of said rude nose possessor.          "Rudeness is waiting to happen," Rose crowed but now she waited giving Carrie a pinch of time like a gift of patience narrowing her eyes where sunlight sparkled but did not veil nor certainly transmute the glowing coal of Rose's core.          Rose gave Carrie a pinch of time in a rude squint Carrie knew was Rose's joke gifted her on festival day, in celebrants' time.