New Bed-Time Stories

by Louise Chandler Moulton

I doubt if any one had ever called the poor little dumb boy “dear” before, in all his eleven years of life. He looked up through his tears, with a glad, strange smile, as if some wonderful, sweet thing had befallen him; and then, in a sort of timid rapture, he kissed the hem of Miss Endell’s gown, and the slippered foot that peeped out beneath it.

I think there is an instinct of motherhood in good women that comes out toward all helpless creatures; and it awoke then in Miss Endell’s heart. After that she and Johnny were almost inseparable. Often she took him with her on her walks, and always when she worked he kept his silent vigil on the hearth-rug.

Miss Endell had one extravagance. She could not bear to be without flowers. She did not care much for the cut and wired bouquets of the florist, but she seldom came home from her walks without some handful of wall-flowers, or a knot of violets or forget-me-nots. Now and then she bought a tea-rose bud; and then Johnny always noticed how lovingly she tended it—how she watched it bursting from bud to flower.

He got to know that this strange, bright creature whom he idolized loved flowers, and loved tea-roses best of all. A wild desire grew in him to buy her tea-roses—not one, only, but a whole bunch. He spent his days in thinking how it was to be done, and his nights in dreaming about it. A penny was the largest sum he had ever possessed in his life, and a penny will not buy one tea-rose, much less a bunch of them.

One day Miss Endell took him with her when she went to see a friend. It was a prosperous, good-natured, rich woman in whose house they found themselves. “Go and see the pictures, Johnny,” Miss Endell said; and Johnny wandered down the long room, quite out of ear-shot.

Then she told his pathetic little story, and her friend’s careless yet kind heart was touched. When it was time for Miss Endell to go, she summoned Johnny; and then the lady they were visiting gave the boy a half-crown, a whole shining, silver half-crown.

Johnny clasped it to his heart in expressive pantomime, and lifted his wistful, inquiring eyes.

“Yes, it is all yours,” the lady said, in answer; “and don’t let any one take it away from you.”

Small danger, indeed, of that! The piece of silver meant but one thing to Johnny,—tea-roses, unlimited tea-roses.

The next day he was taken ill. He had a fever,—a low, slow fever. His aunt was kind enough to him, but she had plenty to do, and Johnny would have been lonely indeed but for Miss Endell.