And the grandmother held up the present, turning it round to show all its beauty. The girl looked up once more at the cake, and then at her grandmother, without moving her head.
'I am so sore!' she whispered feebly.
'What ails you?' asked the old woman.
'Everything ails me,' said the sick girl softly, and two big tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.
The broken Cup looked at all this, and was very sorry, and her pieces tinkled plaintively together, and then she felt ashamed that she had thought herself so unhappy while there was in the world plenty of sorrow far greater than her own. The girl heard the tinkling, and silently looked up to see what it was that was tinkling so on the box. She noticed the beautiful flowers on the broken pieces of the Cup; her eyes brightened by degrees, and she whispered softly:
'Give it to me, grandmamma.'
'Take it, take it, darling! I brought it home for you.'
Mary took the pieces in her hands, trembling from weakness, and began to turn them over and over, admiring them. She had never any playthings, and therefore the pretty pieces seemed to her so much the finer. The more she looked at them the more her eyes brightened, and at last she smiled. The old woman had not for a long time seen such an expression of pleasure on the worn-out face of her poor granddaughter, and the feeble smile of the sick child rejoiced her to tears.
'Oh,' thought the Cup, 'I never expected to give to any one so much pleasure after having been broken to pieces! And I am happier, indeed, than I was in the rich house where everybody at the tea-table admired me!'