The boy threw down his bundle, took the daisies with another "thank you," and hurried away as fast as his poor foot would let him to an old, queer-looking wooden house near the market, where, hugging his treasure closely to his breast, he mounted the shaky stairs until he reached the garret. Pushing open a door here, he entered a neat little room with only one window in it, but that a dormer facing the south. The floor of this room was bare, with the exception of two or three round rag mats, and the walls were decorated in the oddest manner with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, bits of colored glass, strips of glittering tin twisted into grotesque shapes, and red and green motto-papers fashioned into some semblance of flowers.
On a bed near the window lay a little pale-faced, brown-haired girl, with wistful gray eyes, and a smile like sunshine breaking through a cloud. In her hands she held a pair of knitting-needles, with which she was knitting with marvellous quickness some coarse thread into wide, strong lace. Beside the bed stood a small table, holding a box of water-colors, a camel's-hair brush or two, a lead-pencil, a cup filled with water, and a piece of paper on which was a rude attempt at a painting of a bunch of daisies.
"See what I've brought you, Phemie!" cried her brother, joyfully. "To-day's your birthday: thirteen years old—almost as old as I am. Bet you thought I'd forgotten it; but I didn't, dearie; no, indeed."
"Daisies! daisies!" cried the girl, with a sweet glad laugh, dropping her work, and holding out her pretty slender hands. "Oh, brother—dear, good, darling brother—will they live and grow?"
"The gardener says they will, and he ought to know," answered her brother. "And now you needn't be aching your poor little head any more trying to think exactly how they look, for you can study them all day long. But, good gracious! I must go and sell my papers, or we'll have no berries for dinner, and that would be dreadful." And giving his sister a kiss, he hurried away again, as happy, I believe, as any boy in that great city on that pleasant summer day.
"I am so glad, so very, very glad that you have come," said Phemie to the daisies as soon as he was gone, as she set them on the table, and gazed at them with tears in her eyes, "and I beg of you to live, dear daisies. I am a poor weak little girl, and I can sit up but a few hours each day. But a long while ago I could run about like other little girls, and I lived in the country, where thousands of daisies grew, and I have never forgotten them. Mamma was alive then, but she's dead now, and father left us here a year after she died, and we have never seen him since. He didn't care for daisies or us. How good of Brother Frank to bring you to me, daisies! I shall knit so much better and faster, and earn so much more money, with your bright faces smiling at me. And some day I shall make a picture of you—I have been trying to paint one from memory—that shall be almost as pretty as your own dear selves." And she leaned back against her pillow, singing softly to herself; and while her fingers plied the knitting-needles, her spirit, led by the spirits of the meadow flowers, wandered to green fields, and listened to the hum of the bees and the song of the birds, and grew lighter and happier every moment. And Frank, coming in quietly at noon, saw her with closed eyes and clasped hands, and heard her say, "Dear God, a helpless child thanks Thee for daisies!"
And the daisies all lived, and increased in numbers until the room overflowed with them. On floor and shelves they bloomed in cracked pitchers, broken jars, old fruit cans, everything that Frank could find to fill with them. And Phemie did paint a beautiful picture of them at last, and through this picture came much good fortune to that garret home. For Frank, showing it, in his brotherly love and pride, to a kind gentleman whom he served with papers, was surprised to learn that it was worth more than his sister knitting lace for three long months could earn.
And now to end the story. The very prettiest New-Year's card that appeared to celebrate the birth of 1880 was one on which the New-Year's greeting was printed on a ribbon encircling the stems of a bunch of daisies. Those daisies are Phemie's daisies. And the young flower painter, growing stronger day by day, is the happy mistress of two pleasant rooms and a mite of a studio.