I AM coming! I am coming! sings the robin on the wing;
Soon the gates of spring will open; where you loiter I will sing;
Turn your thoughts to merriest music, send it ringing down the vale,
Where the yellow-bird is waiting on the old brown meadow-rail.
I am coming! I am coming! sings the summer from afar;
And her voice is like the shining of some silver-mantled star;
In it breathes the breath of flowers, in it hides the dawn of day,
In it wake the happy showers of the merry, merry May!
DAISY’S TEMPTATION.
I DON’T think grandma would ever know it. I could just slip them into my pocket and put them on after I get there as e-a-sy! I’ll do it;” and Daisy Dorsey lifted her grandma’s gold beads from a box on her lap. She clasped them about her chubby neck and stood before the mirror, talking softly to herself. “How nice it will be!” she said, drawing up her little figure till only the tip of her nose was visible in the glass. “And Jimmy Martin will let me fly his kite instead of Hetty Lee. Hetty Lee, indeed! I don’t believe she ever had any grandmother—not such a grandmother as mine, anyway.”
Then the proud little Daisy fell to thinking of the verse her mother had read to her that morning, about the dear Father in heaven who sees us always, and the blessed angels who are so holy and so pure.
“And I promised mamma I would be so good and try so hard to do right always. No, no; I can’t do it. Lie there, little pretty gold beads. Daisy loves you, but she wants to be good too. So good-bye, dear little, bright gold beads,” laying them softly back in the drawer and turning away with her eyes like violets in the rain.
Now, it so happened that good Grandma Ellis had heard every word Daisy had said, had seen her take the beads from their box in the drawer, knew just how her darling was tempted and how she had conquered pride and evil desire in her little heart, for she was in her bath-room, adjoining her chamber; and the door being ajar, she could hear and see all that Daisy said and did.
How glad she was when she heard her say, “I can’t do it. Good-bye, pretty gold beads!” and she felt so sorry, too, for the great tears in the sweet blue eyes.