Will Title Later

Rose sat on the edge of her front porch, dusty legs crossed at the ankles swinging lazily back and forth. What was she going to do all morning? She'd eaten breakfast and bolted out the back door, just like every other Saturday morning. She didn't need to come back until lunch time. But today was a little different. Her best friend Leigh had to go to the dentist and wouldn't be able to play until she got home. Depending on what they did to her, she might not be playing all day. She remembered what those dentists can do to a girl's mouth.

It was late spring and school would be out soon. She laid her head way back and enjoyed the way the sun warmed her face and neck. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at the clouds. One of them looked like a four-leaf clover. Suddenly, she knew what she was going to do. She hopped off the porch, walked down the sidewalk to the steps that led down the hill to the street. Instead of taking the steps, she carefully moved through the grass to the side of the steps and lay down with her head near the top of the little hill and her feet toward the bottom. This was one of Rose's favorite places. She was eye-level with her favorite patch of clover. There were always four-leaf clovers here.

Ever since she could remember, she could spot a four-leaf clover better than anyone she knew. Sometimes she could harvest a whole bouquet of them. No wonder she felt so lucky about things. Nobody knew about this special patch, though. Not even Leigh. Now, all by herself for the morning seemed like the perfect time for finding clovers. Spring was the best season, too. She gently ran her fingers through the dainty leaves. Those clovers will trick you sometimes by hanging together and looking like four-, five- and even six-leafers. Rose had a good eye, though, and they seemed to jump out at her.

There's one! Her eyes scan the green patch until something breaks the pattern. There's another one. If you look too hard, you never find them. Then, all of a sudden, it jumps out at you. Another one. Pretty good for one day. Three, new, four-leaf clovers. Rose held them tenderly by their stems and headed for the back door. Once inside, she climbed the steps to her bedroom and closed the door. You had to put them away quickly or they curl up on you . Rose was afraid they might not be lucky like that.

She reached under her bed and pulled out her Bible. It was one of the few things that was truly hers. She didn't have to share her Bible with anyone. When she was in the third grade, she was presented her Bible as she entered Confirmation classes. It had a soft, red leather cover and in the bottom right corner, her name was imprinted in gold letters. It had a white satin ribbon to mark the pages with, too. She opened the book randomly and placed one of the clovers carefully in the page near the binding. She did the same for the other two. Her Bible was brimful of four-leaf clovers. Except for a few she placed in her Nancy Drew books, all her clovers went into her Bible. Rose felt that her Bible was about the luckiest treasure in the world.

Tomorrow morning, her grandmother would come to the house and pick up Rose, her sister and brother and take them all to church. Grandmom Jones always had to sit in the front pew of the church. There was never any competition for that seat. She loved to sing those hymns, too! Rose always loved to look up the passages for the service in her Bible and secretly smiled as she passed the pages with clovers in them. It was really amazing how easy it was to keep all those clovers a secret. Nobody else seemed to notice them. She returned her Bible to its place under her bed and went back downstairs.