[to be continued.]
THE STORY OF THE DAISIES.
BY MRS. MARGARET EYTINGE.
Daisies, golden-hearted, star-like, smiling daisies, all over the fields and meadows, all along the highways and by-ways—bonny wee flowers looking bravely up at the dazzling sun, and giving with child-like generosity their beauty to the loneliest spots and most desolate places. Close up to a fence that surrounded a garden where bloomed hundreds of rare and lovely blossoms they crowded, praising with sweet artlessness the grace and fragrance of their more precious sisters, and wondering every morning when the gardener came out at early dawn and collected many young plants together, and gathered roses, and pansies, and gladioles, and verbenas, and pinks, and other flowers by the basketful, to carry away, where he took them and what became of them.
"I will tell you," said a tall, graceful white lily that grew near the garden gate, one day, as she inclined her fair head toward them. "I have been where they are going—I and the tuberoses over yonder. (We are growing in pots sunk in the ground, and therefore can be taken up and moved from place to place without harm.) Once I helped deck a large, sunshiny room—I was a very young bud then—where a great many little children, looking like flowers themselves in their gay dresses, sang, and played, and laughed, and danced for joy, because a baby friend was three years old that day; and once I stood at the right hand of a gray-haired minister, in a crowded church, and heard him say, 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' But, dear, simple, wee things, you don't understand that, do you? I forgot to whom I was talking. They go to a large city, where nothing is seen but brick and stone buildings and hosts of people, and nothing is heard but the sound of voices and footsteps, and the ringing of bells, and the tramping of horses, and rolling of wagons, and where there are no bees, nor butterflies, nor birds, save canaries that live in cages, and sparrows that can live anywhere."
"But the daisies are never taken to the city," said the daisies, after a short pause, "and they are flowers as well as the verbenas and pinks."
"Bless your innocent little hearts! I know they are," said the lily. "But the fact is, no one cares to buy daisies."
"So nobody cares for us in the big city," said the daisies to each other, "and yet the butterflies and birds tell us we are very pretty."
But the lily was mistaken, for the very next morning the gardener came out into the meadow with a trowel in his hand, and digging up some of the largest daisy plants, replanted them in a large flower-pot.
"Somebody wants us after all," they called to the grass, and the dandelions, and the other daisies, as they were carried away, "and we shall see the fine houses, and perhaps live with lilies, roses, and geraniums all the rest of our lives. Good-by, dear friends, good-by."
In a short time the daisies found themselves in a market-place—not among cabbages and tomatoes, but at the end of a row of blooming plants from the garden at which they had so often peeped through the fence. But they had scarcely had time to look about them when they saw a shabbily dressed boy coming slowly toward them—slowly, poor fellow, because one of his feet was sadly misshapen, and in his arms he carried a heavy bundle of newspapers. He looked eagerly at the gardener as he came near.
"I've got your daisies, my boy," the man called, cheerily. "Here they are, still wet with the dew, as handsome daisies as ever I saw. You must keep them in the shade a day or two, giving them a drink now and then, and I don't doubt they'll do finely. Will you take them now?"
"Yes, sir, thank you," said the boy, his whole face lighting up, and his pale cheeks flushing, "if you will let me leave my papers here a few minutes until I can run home with them. But you've brought so many—and they're in a nice pot, too—I'm afraid I haven't money enough to pay for them."
"Five cents was the price agreed on yesterday," said the good-natured gardener, "and I always stick to a bargain. And if there's more than you expected, all the better for you—some of 'em'll be sure to thrive anyhow. As for the pot, you're welcome to that. A flower-pot more or less won't make me or break me."
The boy threw down his bundle, took the daisies with another "thank you," and hurried away as fast as his poor foot would let him to an old, queer-looking wooden house near the market, where, hugging his treasure closely to his breast, he mounted the shaky stairs until he reached the garret. Pushing open a door here, he entered a neat little room with only one window in it, but that a dormer facing the south. The floor of this room was bare, with the exception of two or three round rag mats, and the walls were decorated in the oddest manner with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, bits of colored glass, strips of glittering tin twisted into grotesque shapes, and red and green motto-papers fashioned into some semblance of flowers.
On a bed near the window lay a little pale-faced, brown-haired girl, with wistful gray eyes, and a smile like sunshine breaking through a cloud. In her hands she held a pair of knitting-needles, with which she was knitting with marvellous quickness some coarse thread into wide, strong lace. Beside the bed stood a small table, holding a box of water-colors, a camel's-hair brush or two, a lead-pencil, a cup filled with water, and a piece of paper on which was a rude attempt at a painting of a bunch of daisies.
"See what I've brought you, Phemie!" cried her brother, joyfully. "To-day's your birthday: thirteen years old—almost as old as I am. Bet you thought I'd forgotten it; but I didn't, dearie; no, indeed."
"Daisies! daisies!" cried the girl, with a sweet glad laugh, dropping her work, and holding out her pretty slender hands. "Oh, brother—dear, good, darling brother—will they live and grow?"
"The gardener says they will, and he ought to know," answered her brother. "And now you needn't be aching your poor little head any more trying to think exactly how they look, for you can study them all day long. But, good gracious! I must go and sell my papers, or we'll have no berries for dinner, and that would be dreadful." And giving his sister a kiss, he hurried away again, as happy, I believe, as any boy in that great city on that pleasant summer day.
"I am so glad, so very, very glad that you have come," said Phemie to the daisies as soon as he was gone, as she set them on the table, and gazed at them with tears in her eyes, "and I beg of you to live, dear daisies. I am a poor weak little girl, and I can sit up but a few hours each day. But a long while ago I could run about like other little girls, and I lived in the country, where thousands of daisies grew, and I have never forgotten them. Mamma was alive then, but she's dead now, and father left us here a year after she died, and we have never seen him since. He didn't care for daisies or us. How good of Brother Frank to bring you to me, daisies! I shall knit so much better and faster, and earn so much more money, with your bright faces smiling at me. And some day I shall make a picture of you—I have been trying to paint one from memory—that shall be almost as pretty as your own dear selves." And she leaned back against her pillow, singing softly to herself; and while her fingers plied the knitting-needles, her spirit, led by the spirits of the meadow flowers, wandered to green fields, and listened to the hum of the bees and the song of the birds, and grew lighter and happier every moment. And Frank, coming in quietly at noon, saw her with closed eyes and clasped hands, and heard her say, "Dear God, a helpless child thanks Thee for daisies!"
And the daisies all lived, and increased in numbers until the room overflowed with them. On floor and shelves they bloomed in cracked pitchers, broken jars, old fruit cans, everything that Frank could find to fill with them. And Phemie did paint a beautiful picture of them at last, and through this picture came much good fortune to that garret home. For Frank, showing it, in his brotherly love and pride, to a kind gentleman whom he served with papers, was surprised to learn that it was worth more than his sister knitting lace for three long months could earn.
And now to end the story. The very prettiest New-Year's card that appeared to celebrate the birth of 1880 was one on which the New-Year's greeting was printed on a ribbon encircling the stems of a bunch of daisies. Those daisies are Phemie's daisies. And the young flower painter, growing stronger day by day, is the happy mistress of two pleasant rooms and a mite of a studio.
OLD HANNIBAL.
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
"No, mother," said Colonel Dunway to his wife, at the breakfast table, "I shall ride the black colt on parade to-day. Hannibal is too fat and too old."
"Too old? He and Barry are just of an age."
"And Barry's only a little colt yet? Well, you may bring him and Prue out to the grand review in the afternoon, but I guess I'll ride the black this morning. You can put Hannibal in the carry-all. Perhaps he'd like to take a look again at a regiment of troops in line."
Barry and Prue listened with all their ears.
They knew there was to be a grand parade of soldiers that day, and they were prouder than they knew how to tell of the fact that their father was to wear a uniform, and ride a horse, and give orders to some of the men.
"Prue," said Barry, "father's going to 'spect them."
"In-speck them," whispered Prue, correcting him. "Nobody else knows how."
That might be, for Colonel Dunway had been an officer of the regular army, and he was now Colonel of a regiment of militia; but there was one thing he had said that puzzled Barry and Prue dreadfully.
"Barry," said Prue, after breakfast, "is Nibble old?"
"Father says he is."
"And he said he was fat."
"Dr. Barnes is old, and he's fat."
"But his head's bare."
"Nibble isn't bald, and he isn't gray either."
"He's brown."
Mrs. Dunway had told the exact truth about Hannibal, or Nibble, as the children called him. He and Barry were just of an age, and he had been a mere two-year-old colt when Prue was a baby in her cradle.
It was after that that Colonel Dunway had taken Hannibal with him to the army, and brought him home again.
He had been a war-horse, the Colonel said, and so it would not do to turn him into a plough-horse, and the consequence was that Nibble did not have enough work to do, and he grew fat too fast.
Yet he and Barry were only nine years old apiece. That made eighteen years between them; and if you added seven years for Prue, it would only have made twenty-five, and everybody knows that is not very old, if you had given them all to Hannibal.
Barry and Prue would have given him almost anything they had, for he was a great friend and crony of theirs.
"Prue," said Barry, "let's go out to the barn. I've got an apple."
"He can have my bun."
What there was left of it, that meant, for Prue's little white teeth had been at work on that bun.
That had been a troubled morning for Hannibal. Before he had finished his breakfast a party of men rode by the house, and one of them was playing on a bugle. He had set Hannibal's mind at work upon army matters and war; so when Barry and Prue came to see him, he would not even nibble. He smelled of the apple, and he looked at the bun, but that was all.
"He's getting old," said Barry.
"And fat," added Prue.
"Tell you what, Prue, let's take him out into the lot. I know mother'd let us."
That was likely, for Mrs. Dunway always felt safer about them if Nibble were keeping them company.
"I'll get on his back."
"And I'll lead him. Wait till I fix the halter."
Prue climbed up on the side of the stall where Nibble was, and he stood perfectly still while she clambered over to her place on his back.
Barry knew exactly what to do, and the old war-horse began to think he did himself. He must have been thinking, for he half closed one eye as he was walking out, and opened the other very wide, with a wonderfully knowing look.
He was looking down the lane, and he saw that the front gate was open, and just at that moment there came up the road, very faint and sweet, the music of the cavalry bugle.
"Nibble! Nibble!" exclaimed Barry, "where are you going?"
Hannibal did not answer a word, but walked on down the lane very fast indeed, and Barry lost hold of the halter.
As for Prue, she was not scared a particle, for she had ridden in that way many a time, and her confidence in herself and old Nibble was unbounded.
"Cluck, cluck, cluck—get-ap."
"Stop, Prue, stop. He's going faster."
"Get-ap! Come, Barry. Oh, there's mother at the window!"
THE "THREE CHILDREN."—Drawn by Kelly.
Mrs. Dunway was not frightened any more than Prue, for she said to herself, "Too old, indeed! Well, they're more like three children, when they're together, than anything else. I'm glad he is fat. He won't go too fast for Prue."
He was in the road now, and he seemed disposed to keep Barry from again getting hold of that halter.
"Oh dear," said Barry, "the parade-ground's down there."
Hannibal knew that, by the music, and he was almost trotting now.
In fact, he was looking younger and younger, somehow, every minute, and Barry felt more and more as if he ought to have hold of the halter, instead of merely running along-side and shouting to Prue.
The regiment was drawn up on the great bare field where the review was to be that afternoon, and they looked splendidly.
Colonel Dunway was saying so, as he sat in front of them, on his handsome black colt, and a number of other officers who were riding with him said the same, and so did the ladies who were keeping them company.
Just then the bugle sounded again, from the head of the column, and Prue had to hold on hard, for Hannibal suddenly began to canter, and he answered the music with a loud, clear whinny of delight.
Barry was half out of breath with running, but he kept up with the other two, and in a moment more Hannibal halted, proudly arching his neck, and treading daintily upon the grass, right in front of the regiment.
"I declare," exclaimed Colonel Dunway, "the old fellow has come to review the troops."
"So has Prue," said one of the officers.
Barry hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry, but the soldiers suddenly broke out in a grand "hurrah."
They were cheering Prue and her war-horse, and Colonel Dunway himself was compelled to let the "three children" stay and keep the place Hannibal chose for them at the head of the regiment.
There was plenty of apples for Nibble that day.