The Great Lady's Chief-Mourner.
It was a large white house that stood on a hill. In front stretched a beautiful garden full of all kinds of rare flowers, on to which opened the windows of the sitting-rooms.
Everything was handsome and stately, and the lady who owned it was handsomer and statelier than her house.
In her velvet dress she sat under the shade of a sweeping cedar tree; with a crowd of obsequious relations round her, trying to anticipate her lightest wishes.
"How nice it must be to be rich," thought the little kitchen-maid as she looked out through the trellis work that hid the kitchens at the side of the great house. "How happy my mistress must be. How much I should like to try just for one day what it feels like!"—and she went back with a sigh to her work in the gloomy kitchen.
Through the latticed window she could see nothing but the paved yard, and an old tin biscuit box that stood on the window-sill, and contained two little green shoots sprouting up from the dark mould.
This little ugly box was the kitchen-maid's greatest treasure. Every day she watered it and watched over it, for she had brought the seeds from the tiny garden of her own home, and many sunny memories clustered about them. She was always looking forward to the day when the first blossoms would unfold, and now it really seemed that two buds were forming on the slender stems. The little kitchen-maid smiled with joy as she noticed them.
"I shall have flowers, too!" she said to herself hopefully.