The children looked at her in astonishment as though they wondered if she meant the thing she said.
“We have no rope,” they said, “and none will give us any.”
“There is your rope,” said Eline, pointing out the overgrown plain, where, amid the rocks in the great patches from which they had slowly and painfully drawn the smaller stones, grew masses of pale blue flowers, beautiful, delicate little blossoms, like wind-flowers.
Again the children looked at her, questioningly; not as the people at first had done, but trustingly, though they knew not what she would have them do, but sought to learn her wishes.
So at her bidding they gathered all the ripened stalks of the little flowers and laid them out in the sun as she directed.
Almost it seemed a pity to destroy the plants. One little worker asked Eline of this matter for he loved the flowers and was sorry to see them gathered and dried.
“Does it not hurt the flowers to pluck them?” he asked. “Some say that you can talk with them as with all living things, and you can tell if the flowers do not suffer in the gathering, although they are old and ripe.”
His was a loving heart and Eline saw that he asked this out of no mere curiosity. Gently she touched his forehead with her finger.
“Look!” she said. “Look and listen, for I have opened the seeing eye to you.”