“Am I a flower?” asked George.
“I call you a little human flower,” answered the governess,—“a little human flower, with love in your heart, hidden away there like sweetness in the heart of the bud I was telling you about. Will you let me be your sunshine?”
The wayward boy flung his arms around the neck of Florence and clasped her tightly, but without speaking. He felt more than he could utter.
A tear dropped upon the hand of Agnes, as she sat upon the stairs near the door of the study-room. It seemed to her as if heaven were in that room, while she was on the outside. Never in her life had she felt so strangely; never had such a sense of desolation oppressed her. That lesson of the bud, the wind, and the sunshine,—how deeply it had sunk into her heart! Acting from a sudden impulse, she started up, and, going in where the young governess sat with an arm drawn around each of the two children, she said, with burning eyes, and a voice unsteady from emotion,—
“Be my sunshine also, Miss Harper! Oh, be my sunshine! I have long enough been hurt by the angry wind!”
An appeal so unlooked for surprised Florence; but she did not hesitate. Rising instantly, she took the extended hands of Agnes in both of hers, and answered,—
“I have only sunshine to give, dear Agnes. Regard me no longer as an enemy and an oppressor. I am your friend.”
“I know it, I know it, Miss Harper!”
“Your true friend,” added Florence, kissing her. “And now,” she added, in a sweet, persuasive voice, “let us make this room sacred to peace, order, and instruction, and open all its windows for love’s warm sunshine to stream in upon us daily.”
“It shall be no fault of mine if otherwise,” was the low, earnest reply of the young girl, whom love had conquered.