"There! That's just what I wanted!" said Mrs. De Witt. "I thought, 'If I can only get them two men together, they will smoke and talk, and kind of comfort each other.' Mr. De Witt does feel dreadful bad; but I tell him we are young yet, and don't owe a cent, and, with the Lord's blessing, we will make it up somehow to ourselves and you too. Has your gladiolus blowed out yet?"
"I really don't know," replied Letty. "It had not opened early this morning; and I have been so busy since, I have not looked at it."
"Let us go and see," said Mrs. De Witt.
Letty did not feel as though she cared much about flowers just then; but she felt the intended kindness, and rose to follow her friend to the spot where the valued lilies (six varieties) stood in a cluster, lifting their stately spikes of exquisitely shaped flower-buds. Two of them were expanded, and shone in full beauty.
"A'n't they lovely, though?" exclaimed Mrs. De Witt, with all the enthusiasm of a florist. "Just look at the colour of those large leaves! Mr. De Witt tries to make me say petals; but I never can remember. Do you call it crimson, or scarlet, now?"
"I should say it was between the two," said Letty, interested in spite of herself. "See the beautiful turn of the lip and the shape of the half-opened bud! How perfect!"
"The things that God makes are always perfect, seems to me," said Mrs. De Witt. "He don't slight any of his work. Think of the beautiful things deep down in the sea and hid away in lonesome places of the earth, where no man will ever see them! It seems as though he must take pleasure in them himself: don't it?"
"'The Lord shall rejoice in his works,' the Bible says," observed Letty.
"That's true." She stooped once more to look at the flowers, and added, "There's a verse about these very lilies that you and I ought to take to heart at this present time:—'Consider the lilies of the field,' you know. Mr. De Witt says some of our most beautiful flowers come from Palestine."
"Every thing puts you in mind of something in the Bible: doesn't it?" said Letty.