As the summer came on, all sorts of beautiful flowers appeared along the edges of the brook, in the open clearings, and even in the crevices of the rocks. Nelly gathered great bunches of them every morning. She loved flowers almost as well as she loved mountains. She used to go out late in the afternoon and gather a huge basketful of all the kinds she could find,—red and white, and yellow and blue,—then she would set the basket in the brook and let the water run through it all night, keeping the stems of the flowers very wet. In the morning they would look as fresh as if she had just picked them. Remember this, all of you little children who love flowers and like to pick them. If you pick them in the morning, they will wither and never revive perfectly, no matter how much water you put them in. Pick them at sundown, and leave them in a great tub full of water out of doors all night, and in the morning you can arrange them in bouquets, and they will keep twice as long as they would if you had not left them out of doors all night. Nelly used to sit on the ground in the open space west of the saw-mill and arrange her bouquets; sometimes she would tie up as many as eight or ten in one morning, and sometimes travellers driving past would call to her and ask her to sell them: but Nelly would not sell them; she always gave them away to anybody who loved flowers. Rob thought she was very foolish. "Nell, why didn't you take the money?" he would say. "It's just the same to sell flowers as milk: isn't it?"
"No," said Nelly, "I don't think it is. The flowers are not ours."
"Whose are they?" exclaimed Rob.
"God's," said Nelly, soberly. Rob could not appreciate Nelly's feeling.
"Well, what makes you steal 'em, then?" he asked, in a satirical tone.
"God likes to have us pick them: I know he does," said Nelly, earnestly. "He gives them all to us for every summer as long as we live."
"Oh, pshaw, Nell!" said Rob. "He don't do any such thing. They just grow: that's all."
"Well, papa says that God makes them grow on purpose for us to see how pretty they are. They aren't of any other use: they aren't the same as potatoes. And don't you know the little verse,—
| "'God might have made the earth bring forth |
| Enough for great and small; |
| The oak tree and the cedar tree, |
| Without a flower at all.' |
I'm always thinking of that. 'Twould be horrid here if we didn't have any thing but things to eat."