But now are her melancholy meditations cheered and her torpid blood warmed and her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous years by a draught from the true fountain of youth in a case-bottle . It is strange that men should deem that fount a fable , when its liquor fills more bottles than the Congress-water . -- Sip it again , good nurse , and see whether a second draught will not take off another score of years , and perhaps ten more , and show us in your high-backed chair the blooming damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane . -- Get you gone , Age and Widowhood ! -- Come back , unwedded Youth ! -- But , alas ! the charm will not work . In spite of Fancy 's most potent spell , I can see only an old dame cowering over the fire , a picture of decay and desolation , while the November blast roars at her in the chimney and fitful showers rush suddenly against the window . Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton -- such was the pretty maiden-name of Nurse Toothaker -- possessed beauty that would have gladdened this dim and dismal chamber as with sunshine . It won for her the heart of Edward Fane , who has since made so great a figure in the world and is now a grand old gentleman with powdered hair and as gouty as a lord . These early lovers thought to have walked hand in hand through life . They had wept together for Edward 's little sister Mary , whom Rose tended in her sickness -- partly because she was the sweetest child that ever lived or died , but more for love of him . She was but three years old . Being such an infant , Death could not embody his terrors in her little corpse ; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead child 's brow , though chill , as she curled the silken hair around it , nor to take her tiny hand and clasp a flower within its fingers . Afterward , when she looked through the pane of glass in the coffin-lid and beheld Mary 's face , it seemed not so much like death or life as like a wax-work wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep and dreaming of its mother 's smile . Rose thought her too fair a thing to be hidden in the grave , and wondered that an angel did not snatch up little Mary 's coffin and bear the slumbering babe to heaven and bid her wake immortal . But when the sods were laid on little Mary , the heart of Rose was troubled . She shuddered at the fantasy that in grasping the child 's cold fingers her virgin hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality and could never lose the earthy taint . How many a greeting since ! But as yet she was a fair young girl with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom , and , instead of `` Rose '' -- which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty -- her lover called her `` Rosebud . ''
The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward XXXXX .
Congress-water Fane Mary Rose Rosebud Toothaker case-bottle fire second wax-work