IX. THE FLOWERS THAT CAME TO THE WELL.
“He might have made the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,
The oak tree and the cedar tree,
And not a flower at all.”
—Mary Howitt.
Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair leaning forward with her chin on the window-sill looking down into her father’s untidy back yard.
The only pleasant thing in it was a lilac bush that was a marvel of beauty when it was in bloom, but that had faded many weary days ago, leaving ugly brown bunches where the lilacs had been; there were two well-worn paths, one leading to the kitchen door, and the other to the well, and nothing besides, excepting weeds with a background of apple orchard. If Nettie had raised her eyes she would have seen woods, and hills and fields of grain, a bit of road, a wooden bridge, and a deep blue sky full of puffy, white clouds, but she would not raise her eyes; when her back ached as it did to-day she never saw anything but the weeds in the yard, especially those tall rag-weeds growing close around the well. Her father had promised to “clear up” the yard after planting, but planting had come and gone, and he was still too busy.
“Oh, if I were only able to pull weeds,” she sighed.
It was a very gentle sigh, she was not strong enough to sigh heavily. Three years ago she could shout and run, to-day she could not move her feet, and there were many days during the year when she must lie still in bed.
In winter, she had a south room, at the front of house, where she saw the rising and the setting sun, and had a good view of all the people who passed back and forth from the village; in summer, she had this cool north room that looked out on the back yard.
The back yard was full of interest to her—when she could forget the weeds. Twenty times a day her mother came to the kitchen door to look up at her, and tell her how the work was going on; she knew what was cooking by the odors that came up to her and what all the noises meant, from the click of the egg-beater to the thud of the churn-dasher, and she saw old Mrs. Finch when she came to borrow baking powder, and the pedlars, and book-agents, and apple-tree men; but best of all she liked to watch for her father to come in to dinner and supper.
In blue flannel shirt and big straw hat, tired and dusty and warm, he never failed to look up and call: “Why, hello, you there, daughter?” just as if she were well, and had only run up stairs for a moment. And her weak, “I’m here, father,” made the sadness and the happiness of his life.
Nettie moved her head slightly, and gained a view of the pasture where three cows were feeding; she could not see the brook, but she knew that it ran through the pasture, and she knew there were blue lilies all along the brook, some of them growing in the water.
How she longed to see those lilies growing in the water!
She was only ten years old the last time she saw those lilies: she was driving home the cows at night, in her pink calico dress and stout leather shoes, with her father’s old straw hat on the back of her head, “a picture of a happy, healthy, country lassie,” her father thought as he watched her standing by the clump of lilies while she waited for the cows to drink. She was thinking she would gather a big bunch of the lilies as soon as they were opened the next morning—but the pet calf came behind her and butted her down, and her father carried home in his arms a helpless little daughter. And there were tiger lilies in bloom; she could not see the place where they were growing, but it was only a quarter of a mile away in a fence corner, such a patch of them! Oh, how she longed to see those tiger lilies growing! The last time she saw the tiger lilies was the Sunday before she said good-bye to the blue lilies—she was walking home alone from Sunday-school in white dress and blue ribbons, and brown kid shoes, and when she came to the fence corner with the great clump of tiger lilies, she thought of picking a large bunch of them, but just then she heard a noise behind her, and turning, saw a neighbor’s three little black and white pigs; they had followed her all the way from the corner, and it was so funny to think how she had walked along unconsciously, with those pigs in single file behind her, that she just stood and laughed, and then she clapped her hands at them and chased them back, and forgot all about the tiger lilies.
“Oh, blue lilies, oh, tiger lilies, I’ll never see you growing any more,” she sighed.
“Why, hello, daughter, you up there?” called the voice below her.
Nettie did not answer; she felt too discouraged to speak, but she looked down and tried to smile at her father.
Her father looked just as usual, only he had a scythe over his shoulder.
“I came in a little earlier to cut down your weeds,” he called cheerily.
Nettie watched him as he swung the scythe, and listened to the swish, swish, as the tall weeds fell; when the weeds around the well grew less she caught a glimpse of something blue, and then of something red; she pulled herself up to the window, and leaned out, and then she shrieked:—
“Father, don’t cut down the lilies!”
There they were, blue lilies and tiger lilies, growing together, close by the well!
“How did they get there, father?” she called.
“They must have been in the sod that I put around the well last fall,” he replied; “I remember now that I got it from two different places. If I had cut down the weeds before the lilies bloomed, I shouldn’t have known they were there, and should have cut them all down together.”
Nettie fell back in her chair with a sigh of delight, watching her father while with his hands he pulled all the weeds away from the lilies.
“Mother,” she called, lifting herself forward, and resting her chin again on the window-sill.
“Well, Deary,” came in a quick voice from the shed, and her mother appeared in the shed doorway with the dish of boiled potatoes she held in her hand when Nettie’s voice reached her.
“Mother, will you ask Judith to stop and see my lilies the next time she goes past?”
“Your lilies, child?”
“Yes, my own lilies, there by the well. They came and grew just for me.”
Mrs. Evans gave a glance toward the well, then hastened to set the potato dish on the dinner table.
“Of all things! And how she has wanted to see lilies grow! The blessed child is watched over and done for as her father and I can’t do. I declare,” in a shame-faced way, all to herself, “when such things happen I wish I was a Christian.”
“Mother, mother,” called the happy voice again; “I want Joe to see my lilies too.”
“Yes, Deary,” promised her mother from within the shed.