“Bless her heart of gold, that girl!” he breathed, his strong face working. “Whether you call her ‘Morning-Glory’ or foam-chicken, I say bless her heart for calling the bluebird through a dumb child’s window when she can’t call it for herself.... I had a little sister, long ago, born deaf an’ dumb; she only lived to be four. I played with her until she died.... I take off my hat to that Camp Fire Girl.”
“Oh-h!” exploded Sesooā between a sob and a song which together cleared the horizon and righted her toppling enthusiasm; that in girlhood to which Captain Andy, hero of a hundred sea-fights, bared his head, as he reverently did, was best worth while; unwittingly he, a connoisseur in Life, had put his finger on that which was lacking in Olive’s picture, present in this: the seeking Beauty not for oneself alone, not in one’s own life only, but to see it blossom in dull, sad, silent corners of the human garden, the Camp Fire ideal.
Swept upon a tide of reaction Sally turned passionately to Cousin Anne. “Oh, Jessica is the dandiest girl,” she exclaimed, slangy with emotion. “Oh! Miss Anne, I do want to ask you a question; do you know, won’t you tell me, why she was bent on choosing Morning-Glory as her Camp Fire name and emblem, why she was called ‘Glory’ as a pet name before?”
“It was because of a little incident in her childhood.”
“Yes, I know! And this playground, teeming with children, is the very place to hear it,” seconded Arline, chiming in.
“Well, I don’t think she would mind my telling you girls, it’s such a trifling little story, but because it’s so tenderly connected with her mother, who died a little more than two years ago, she doesn’t care to speak of it herself; her mother was my cousin.”
“Yes?” breathed the expectant girls.
“I used to visit them when Jessica was a little child; she loved flowers from the time she was a baby girl, and her mother invented a ‘flower game’ which she used to play with her at night after the child was in bed, so that she might fall asleep with a happy impression on her mind; the mother would begin, ‘I am your rose,’ to which the drowsy little voice would answer, ‘I am your violet,’ or something like that and so on through all the flowers they could name, until Jessica was asleep.
“Well! one night the game went on as usual: ‘I am your rose,’ ‘I am your vi’let;’ ‘I am your pansy,’ ‘I am your lily;’ ‘I am your dandelion,’ ‘I am your nasturt’um;’ ‘I am your lily of the valley,’ but to this there was no answer—the mother had the last word—Jessica was fast asleep.
“Early next morning, however, her mother was awakened by two little arms stealing round her neck, by a moist little mouth pressed to her cheek and a child’s voice saying softly into her ear: ‘Mamma! Mamma! I am your morning-glory!’