down upon it_! I know its ways, and though kindly meant, I should have
preferred paper-knives!"

THE GREAT LADY'S CHIEF-MOURNER.

It was a large white house that stood on a hill. In front stretched a
beautiful garden full of all kinds of rare flowers, on to which opened
the windows of the sitting-rooms.

Everything was handsome and stately, and the lady who owned it was
handsomer and statelier than her house.

In her velvet dress she sat under the shade of a sweeping cedar tree;
with a crowd of obsequious relations round her, trying to anticipate
her lightest wishes.

"How nice it must be to be rich," thought the little kitchen-maid as
she looked out through the trellis work that hid the kitchens at the
side of the great house. "How happy my mistress must be. How much I
should like to try just for one day what it feels like!"--and she went
back with a sigh to her work in the gloomy kitchen.

Through the latticed window she could see nothing but the paved yard,
and an old tin biscuit box that stood on the window-sill, and
contained two little green shoots sprouting up from the dark mould.

This little ugly box was the kitchen-maid's greatest treasure. Every
day she watered it and watched over it, for she had brought the seeds
from the tiny garden of her own home, and many sunny memories
clustered about them. She was always looking forward to the day when
the first blossoms would unfold, and now it really seemed that two
buds were forming on the slender stems. The little kitchen-maid smiled
with joy as she noticed them.

"I shall have flowers, too!" she said to herself hopefully.

One day, as the mistress of the house walked on the terrace by the
vegetable garden, the little kitchen-maid came past suddenly with a
basket of cabbages. She smiled and curtsied so prettily that the great
lady nodded to her kindly, and threw her a beautiful red rose she
carried in her hand.

The kitchen-maid could hardly believe her good fortune. She picked up
the flower and ran with it to her bedroom, where she put it in a
cracked jam-pot in water; and the whole room seemed full of its
fragrance--just as the little kitchen-maid's heart was all aglow with
gratitude at the kind act of the great lady.

Time passed, and the little kitchen-maid's rose withered; but the
slender plants in the tin box expanded into flower, and all the yard
seemed brighter for their white petals.

One day the mistress of the house fell ill. Doctors