1840.
PRICE ONE SHILLING.
PALM SUNDAY;
OR,
LITTLE MARY’S SATURDAY’S WALK.
“Come, Mary!” said Mr. Lumley to his little girl, one Saturday afternoon, “put on your bonnet and your thick shoes. I am going to Davies’s cottage, and there is a basket for you to carry, with some work for Jane, and some jelly for her grandmother. The lane is pretty clean, and the stepping-stones, even the rickety one, quite out of water.”
Before the last comfortable assurance could be heard, Mary was ready for the walk.
Papa at leisure on a fine Saturday afternoon to help her to enjoy her holiday would have been enough; but to go to old Molly Davies, and to see her favourite Sunday-scholar Jane, was pleasure indeed.
It was a charming afternoon,—one of the first that Mary had called so that spring. The winter had been severe; there had been no fine Saturdays in February, scarcely one in March. But on this, the wind was soft, the sun was shining, the violets had no withered brown edges to their deep blue petals, but looked and smelt as March violets should look and smell. In the sheltered lane there were a few full-blown primroses among the moss, the woolly stems of the cowslips were already peeping up in the meadows, and innumerable buds of all Mary’s favourite spring flowers seemed ready to open in the warm sunshine.
“Oh, papa, how happy I am!” cried the little girl, as she shewed him a lap full of gay colours. “Here are yellow pileworts, and grey lady’s-smocks, and wood sorrel, and cowslips, ready to blow; and, I declare, there’s a wood anemone quite blown. Oh! this year these darling anemones will answer to their pretty name of pasque-flower, for they will be in full beauty by Easter.
“Do you know, papa, I feel as if it were more good in God to create beautiful things to make us happy when we only look at them, than even to give us needful and useful things, which are often far from being beautiful or pleasant. I hope I am not foolish or wrong to say so.”
“No, my little Mary. I remember the wise and good Mrs. W—y said the same thing, almost in your very words, to me some years ago, when she saw a bunch of spring flowers in water on the table of a sick friend. I am glad you are learning to see and love the goodness of God while you are young; it will make it easier to do your duty towards him for the rest of your life.”