"No, honey, she's an angel," answered mammy, folding her tired hands for a moment's rest, when her guest had gone.
Helen heard both question and answer, and sighed to herself, "I wish somebody else thought so."
When the first Wednesday came, Betty was at the trysting-place half an hour too soon, and had time to tell the mild-eyed deer all about it, before Miss Helen came.
That meeting was a pretty sight, though only a fawn and an old apple-woman saw it. Helen was half-hidden behind a great nosegay of June roses, lilies of the valley, sweet jonquils and narcissus, sprays of tender green, and white lilac plumes. Betty gave one cry of rapture, as she clutched it in both hands, trembling with delight, for never had she dreamed of owning such a treasure as this.
"All for me! all for me!" she said, as if it was hard to believe. "Oh, what will mammy say?"
"Run home and see. Never mind thanks. Get your posy into water as soon as you can, and come again Saturday," said Helen, as she went on, with a nod and a smile, while Betty raced home to fill every cup and plate they owned, and make a garden of the poor little room, where mammy worked all day.
All through the summer, rain or shine, these two friends kept tryst, and though Helen seemed no nearer getting her wish, this little flower-mission of hers helped her to wait.
Strangers watched the pretty girl with her nosegays, and felt refreshed by the winsome sight. Friends joked her about her black Flora, and would-be lovers pleaded in vain for one bud from her bouquets.
She found real happiness in this small duty, and did it faithfully for its own sake, little dreaming that some one was tracking her by the flowers she left behind her in the byways of her life.
For, seeing how much these fragrant messengers were to Betty and her mother, Helen fell into the way of taking flowers to others also, and never went to town without a handful to leave here and there, by some sick-bed, in a child's hand, on a needle-woman's table, or dropped in the gutter, for dear, dirty babies to find and crow over.