All the summer the poor sempstress had been too busy during the daylight, to afford time even to cross the Square to study the strange paper on the Fountain. "If learned men cannot read it, a poor ignorant woman like me could certainly never do so," she said to the child, and the little girl looked up at her with tender love in her eyes.
"You are so good, you could do anything," she whispered, and clasped the worn hand on which the needle-pricks had left the marks of many long years of patient sewing. "I should like to see the paper so much," continued the child, after a thoughtful pause. "I wish I could walk there, but it is so long since I walked, and the snow is so deep now," and she sighed.
"Some day, if the good God pleases, I will carry you there," said the workwoman—and the child as she lay patiently on her little bed, dreamt and dreamt of the mysterious paper that no one could read, until the longing to see it became uncontrollable, and her friend the sempstress promised that she would spare an hour the next day from her work, and if the sun shone she would carry the invalid across the Market Place to the old stone Fountain.
The next morning the child's face was bright with anticipation, as the woman wrapped her in a warm shawl and carried her fragile weight down the staircase. The cobblestones hurt the poor sempstress's feet, and she staggered under the light burden, but she persevered, for the child's murmurs of delight rang in her ears—
"How sweetly the sun shines! How white the snow looks! How beautiful, how beautiful it is to be alive!"
When they reached the Fountain the sun shone brightly upon the Angel's Scroll.
The workwoman seated herself on one of the swept stone steps, still holding the child in her arms, and they gazed long and earnestly at the writing above them.
Gradually a smile of delight spread across both their faces. "It is quite, quite easy!" they cried together. "How is it people have been puzzling so long?"—for as they looked the crabbed letters unrolled before them, straightened, and arranged themselves in order, and the Angel's message was read by the poor workwoman and the sick child.
"Love God, and live for others," said the Scroll, and a soft light seemed to stream from it and shed a glow of happiness right into the hearts of the two who read it. The air was warmer, the sun shone more brightly, and just by the foot of the Fountain, pushing through the snow, sprang one blue head of palest forget-me-not.
As the letters on the Scroll became plainer and plainer, the paper slowly rolled up and shrunk away, until it had disappeared altogether.