The flowers in the big garden were all talking about the new rose that had just come to stay with them. " Rose is very beautiful," remarked Peony to the Hollyhock; "you know she was just an ordinary kind of a rose until one evening, when the Queen of the Fairies didn't know just where to go for the night, she leaned over and said to her, 'Will you sleep in the heart of a rose?' and the Queen said of course she would, and in the morning the Fairy Queen in return for the hospitality gave her a delicate veil of moss, and from that time she was called the 'Moss Rose.'"  
"Indeed!" replied the Hollyhock. "How lovely; I wish a fairy would come through our garden."
 
"Perhaps one will," said the Peony. "At any rate the Rose has always been the queen of flowers, and now that we have a new rose perhaps the Queen of the Fairies may visit our garden."
 
The Hollyhock smiled. "Tell me more," she said. "Do you know any more stories about red roses, or white roses, or pink roses, or yellow roses?"
 
"Yes, indeed," replied the Peony, "for I love roses; everybody does. You know the old Romans loved them just as much as we, and they somehow managed to make them bloom in the winter time. When they wanted to talk over matters that they did not want repeated abroad they hung a rose from the ceiling over the table, and all the conversation was called 'sub rosa,' 'under the rose.' The reason for this was because Cupid once gave a rose to Harpoc............