SUMMER FLOWERS.
EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING.
PLEASE, Mr. Mate has that cloud a silver lining?”
The question was asked by little Kate Vale, the daughter of an emigrant, who, with her mother, was following her father, who had gone before to New York. Katie was a quiet, gentle little child, who gave trouble to no one. She had borne the suffering of seasickness at the beginning of the voyage so patiently, and now took the rough sea-fare so thankfully, that she had made a fast friend of Tom Bolton, the mate. Bolton had a warm, kindly heart, and one of the children whom he had left in England was just the age of Katie; this inclined him all the more to show her kindness. Katie often had a piece of Bolton’s sea-biscuit; he told her tales which he called “long yarns,” and sometimes in rough weather he would wrap his thick jacket around her, to keep the chill from her thinly-clad form. Katie was not at all afraid of Bolton, or “Mr. Mate,” as she called him, and she took hold of his hard brown hand as she asked the question,—
“Has that cloud a silver lining?”
Bolton glanced up at a very black, lowering cloud, which seemed to blot the sun quite out of that part of the sky.
“Why do you ask me, Kate?” said the sailor.
“Because mother often says that every cloud has a silver lining, and that one looks as if it had none.”