and when he was seated on the grass, among
the yellow flowers, he laughed aloud with joy, kicked out his little
legs, rolled about, plucked the yellow flowers, and kissed them in
childlike innocence. The elder children broke off the flowers with
long stems, bent the stalks one round the other, to form links, and
made first a chain for the neck, then one to go across the
shoulders, and hang down to the waist, and at last a wreath to wear
round the head, so that they looked quite splendid in their garlands
of green stems and golden flowers. But the eldest among them
gathered carefully the faded flowers, on the stem of which was grouped
together the seed, in the form of a white feathery coronal. These
loose, airy wool-flowers are very beautiful, and look like fine
snowy feathers or down. The children held them to their mouths, and
tried to blow away the whole coronal with one puff of the breath. They
had been told by their grandmothers that who ever did so would be sure
to have new clothes before the end of the year. The despised flower
was by this raised to the position of a prophet or foreteller of
events.

"Do you see," said the sunbeam, "do you see the beauty of these
flowers? do you see their powers of giving pleasure?"

"Yes, to children," said the apple-bough.

By-and-by an old woman came into the field, and, with a blunt
knife without a handle, began to dig round the roots of some of the
dandelion-plants, and pull them up. With some of these she intended to
make tea for herself; but the rest she was going to sell to the
chemist, and obtain some money.

"But beauty is of higher value than all this," said the apple-tree
branch; "only the chosen ones can be admitted into the realms of the
beautiful. There is a difference between plants, just as there is a
difference between men."

Then the sunbeam spoke of the boundless love of God, as seen in
creation, and over all that lives, and of the equal distribution of
His gifts, both in time and in eternity.

"That is your opinion," said the apple-bough.

Then some people came into the room, and, among them, the young
countess,--the lady who had placed the apple-bough in the
transparent vase, so pleasantly beneath the rays of the sunlight.
She carried in her hand something that seemed like a flower. The
object was hidden by two or three great leaves, which covered it
like a shield, so that no draught or gust of wind could injure it, and
it was carried more