Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/241

Rh came the spring, and the sun shone as warm as could be, and then there peeped out of the flower-pot two small green leaves.

"That is me and Molly!" said Anthony. "That is wonderful! that is beautiful!"

Soon there came out a third leaf. Who could that be for? But there came another and yet another! Every day it grew stronger and stronger, and the plant became a little tree. And all this was pictured in a single tear that was brushed away and disappeared; but it might come again from its source—from old Anthony's heart.

Near Eisenach there is a great ridge of stony mountains; one of them stands out from the rest with a rounded top, bare of trees or bushes or grass. This one is called the Venusberg, and within it lives Lady Venus, a goddess of heathen times; Lady Holle she is called now, and that every child in Eisenach knows. She it was who enticed the noble knight, Tannhäuser, the Minnesinger, into her mountain, away from the minstrels of the Wartburg.

Little Molly and Anthony sometimes found themselves on the mountain, and once she said to him, "Dare you climb up and say, 'Lady Holle! Lady Holle! look out, here is Tannhäuser!'" But Anthony did not dare; Molly did; but she only said the words "Lady Holle, Lady Holle!" out loud and clearly, the rest she said so softly under her breath, that Anthony was quite sure she had said nothing at all.

Yet so bold as she looked, and so saucy, just as she did sometimes when she and some other little girls met him in the gardens; then they all would try and