glancing over it, said,
"Why, there stands the large thistle! it has no flowers now."

"Yes, there is still the ghost of the last one," said her husband,
pointing to the silvery remains of the last flower--a flower in itself.

"How beautiful it is!" she said. "We must have one carved in the frame
of our picture."

And once more the young man had to get over the fence, to break off the
silvery cup of the thistle flower. It pricked his fingers for his pains,
because he had called it a ghost. And then it was brought into the
garden, and to the Hall, and into the drawing room. There stood a large
picture--the portraits of the two, and in the bridegroom's buttonhole
was painted a thistle. They talked of it and of the flower cup they had
brought in with them--the last silver-shimmering thistle flower, that
was to be reproduced in the carving of the frame.

The air took all their words and scattered them about, far and wide.

"What strange things happen to one!" said the thistle bush. "My
first-born went to live in a buttonhole, my last-born in a frame! I
wonder what is to become of me."

The old donkey, standing by the roadside, cast loving glances at the
thistle and said, "Come to me, my sweetheart, for I cannot go to you; my
tether is too short!"

But the thistle bush made no answer. It grew more and more thoughtful,
and it thought as far ahead as Christmas, till its budding thoughts
opened into flower.

"When one's children are safely housed, a mother is quite content to
stay beyond the fence."

"That is true," said the sunshine; "and you will be well placed, never
fear."

"In a flowerpot or in a frame?" asked the thistle.

"In a story," answered the sunshine. And here is the story!

[Illustration]

THE PEN AND THE INKSTAND

IN A POET'S room, where his inkstand stood on the table, the remark was
once made: "It is wonderful what can be brought out of an inkstand. What
will come next? It is indeed wonderful."

"Yes, certainly," said the inkstand to the pen and to the other articles
that stood on the table; "that's what I always say. It is wonderful and
extraordinary what a number of things come out of me. It's quite
incredible, and I really never know what is coming next when that man
dips his pen into me. One drop out of me is enough for half a page of
paper--and what cannot half a page contain?

"From me all the works of the poet are produced--all those imaginary
characters whom people fa