Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 4.djvu/220

 nearer getting her wish, this little flower-mission of hers helped her to wait.

Strangers watched the pretty girl with her nosegays, and felt refreshed by the winsome sight. Friends joked her about her black Flora, and would-be lovers pleaded in vain for one bud from her bouquets.

She found real happiness in this small duty, and did it faithfully for its own sake, little dreaming that some one was tracking her by the flowers she left behind her in the byways of her life.

For, seeing how much these fragrant messengers were to Betty and her mother, Helen fell into the way of taking flowers to others also, and never went to town without a handful to leave here and there, by some sick-bed, in a child's hand, on a needle-woman's table, or dropped in the gutter, for dear, dirty babies to find and crow over.

And, all unconsciously, these glimpses of poverty, pain, neglect, and loneliness, taught her lessons she had never learned before,—a sweeter language than German, a nobler music than any Herr Pedalstrum could give her, and a more winning charm than either youth or beauty could confer,—for the gay girl was discovering that life was not all a sum-