"
[Illustration: Little girls picking flowers]
"It is only the flowers that can see into hearts," said the bird
gravely; "but this I know, that your angel is of earth, not heaven."
So saying, she spread her silken wings and flew away.
But the flower said, "Is there, in all heaven, anything more fair than
a maiden?"
NOON
"I would not pluck you to please my idle fancies, dear blossom," said
the maiden gently, "for I cannot bear to see the wild flowers wither
and fade! But I know of one who lies ill and dying, to whom the scent
and sight of a wild flower may bring some passing moment of peace.
Tell me, then, you who are so pure and lovely, will not you spare a
space of your slender life, that so you may make happy the heart of a
sorrowing one?"
Then the flower said, "Dear maiden, I will"; but inasmuch as it spake
not the maiden's language, it breathed forth all its perfume, like
sweet music, in consent. And, though the maiden knew not that the
flower had heard her words, and had answered her, yet at heart she was
strangely though sweetly saddened. "Even in heaven I should long for
the earth-flowers!" she said, as she drank in the fragrance. "Is there
anything, in all heaven, more fair than a flower?"
* * * * * *
Then the maiden plucked the flower, and bore it away from the birds and
the sunshine, away from the wind and the trees, to a squalid court in a
great city, where a dying woman lay, haggard and wan, upon a bed.
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