342 F OVULAR TALES OF FLOWERS 
“ One spring day the neighbour’s boy brought him some 
field-flowers besides ; and among them there happened to 
be one that still retained its root, and which he therefore 
carefully planted in a flower-pot and placed in the window 
near his bed. The flower was planted by a lucky hand ; 
it throve and put forth new shoots, and blossomed every 
year. It became the rarest flower-garden for the sick boy, 
and his only little treasure here on earth; he watered it, 
and cherished it, and took care it should profit by every 
sunbeam, from the first to the last, that filtered through 
that lonely window, and the flower became interwoven in 
his very dreams; for it was for him it bloomed, for him 
it spread tis fragrance and delighted the eye, and it was 
to the flower he turned in the last gasp of death, when 
the Lord called him. He has now been a year with his 
heavenly Father; and for a year did the flower stand for- 
gotten in the window, till it withered. It w'as therefore 
cast out among the sweepings in the street on the day of 
moving; and this is the flower, the poor faded flower, 
which we have added to our nosegay, because this flower 
gave more joy than the rarest flower in the garden of a 
queen.” 
“And how do you know all this?” asked the child, as 
the angel carried him up to heaven. 
“ I know it,” said the angel, “ because I myself was the 
.little sick boy who walked on crutches ; I know my own 
flower.” 
And the child opened his eyes wide, and looked full in 
the angel’s serenely beautiful face. At the same moment 
they reached the kingdom of heaven, where all was joy 
and blessedness. 
And God pressed the child to His heart. 
THE CORN-FLOWER AND THE POPPY. 
Long ago there was a king who had one beautiful daugh- 
ter. To her was given whatsoever she desired. Men- 
servants and maid-servants waited to do her bidding. So 
it chanced that the little Princess became a spoiled and 
wilful child. She never thought of the wishes of others. 
She always followed her own desires. 
