Aunt Jimmy's Will

by Mabel Osgood Wright

“There’s Tessie; oh, I know that Tessie would love to have some!” cried Bird, eagerly; “she has not waved to us for nearly a week, and I was going to see her this afternoon when Billy takes his nap, if Aunt Rose will let me,” and Bird told what she knew of the little cripple who “kept house” by herself while her mother and sister worked.

Then a happy idea came to Marion Clarke. Handing out a flat wicker basket, that held perhaps twenty-five bouquets, to Bird, she said: “Would you like to be one of the Flower Missionaries this summer and carry bouquets? Yes?” as she saw the glad look in her eyes; “then you may fill this basket, and here is a big bouquet for you and something extra sweet to add to the basket,—see, a bunch of real wallflowers, such as grow over seas, some foreign-born body will go wild with joy over it, and here is a fruit bouquet a youngster has evidently put together,—big strawberries on their stalks set in their own leaves.

“Miss Vorse is coming now. I will introduce you and tell her to give you the flowers. What is your name? Bird O’More. I’m glad of that; it seems to fit you. I should have been disappointed if it had been Jane Jones,” she continued, as a sweet-faced, tall young woman, dressed in a dark blue gown and bonnet, entered, saying: “I’m afraid that I am late, but there is so much illness among the little children in the district now that I could not get away. A new Flower Missionary! That is good; children can reach those whom we cannot.”

Presently Bird found herself walking along the street, Billy’s hand in one of hers, and the basket of flowers in the other. Billy was prattling happily, but for once she scarcely heard what he said, the flower voices were whispering so gently and saying such beautiful things.

“Take us to Tessie,” whispered one. “God lets us bring sunlight to dark places,” said another—“You can do the same.” “Be happy, you have something to give away,” breathed another, and this flower was a spray of cheerful honeysuckle that blooms freely for every one alike.

Yes, Bird was happy, for Marion Clarke had held her by the hand and called her a Flower Missionary; she had flowers to give away and flowers to take home. Oh, joy! she could try to paint them, and she pushed the bouquet that held the old garden flowers, the mignonette, sweet brier and honeysuckle under the others to keep for her own.

If she waited to go home first, the flowers might fade, so an impulse seized her to give Tessie her flowers first, and then turned into the street below their own, trying to remember Mattie’s directions—“Count six houses from the butcher’s, and then go through the arch, and up two pairs of stairs to the top.”

Before she had gone a block, two little girls had begged her for flowers, one rosy and sturdy chose red and yellow zenias; the other, who, like Billy, had a “bad leg” and hopped, chose delicate-hued sweet peas. Bird had never seen a lame child in Laurelville, but now she met them daily, for such little cripples are one of the frequent sights of poorer New York.

At the first corner a blind woman, selling the mats she herself crocheted, begged for “a posy that she could tell by the smell was passing.” To her Bird gave the bunch of mignonette. A burly truckman, who thought she was selling the flowers, threw her a dime and asked for a “good-smellin’ bokay for the missis who was done up with the heat,” so she tossed him back the coin and a bouquet of spicy garden pinks and roses together, while Billy called in his piping voice, “We’re a Flower Mission—we gives ’em away,” so that the man drove off laughing, his fat face buried in the flowers.