them,--which I heard
Story-tell Lib relate. The words are her own, but I cannot give you the
sweet tones, the quaint manner, the weird, strange personality, of the
little narrator. Let me say here that often the little parables seemed
meant to cheer and lift up Lib's own trembling soul, shut up in the
frail, crippled body. Meant, I say; perhaps that is not the right word.
For did she mean anything by these tales, at least consciously? Be that
as it may, certain of these little stories seemed to touch her own case
strangely.

The Shet-up Posy

II

The first story I ever heard the child tell was one of those which
seemed to hold comfort and cheer for herself or for humble little souls
like her. It was a story of the closed gentian, the title of which she
announced, as she always did, loudly, and with an amusing little air of
self-satisfaction.

The Shet-up Posy

Once there was a posy. 'T wa'n't a common kind o' posy, that blows out
wide open, so's everybody can see its outsides and its insides too.
But 't was one of them posies like what grows down the road, back o' your
pa's sugar-house, Danny, and don't come till way towards fall. They're
sort o' blue, but real dark, and they look 's if they was buds 'stead
o' posies,--only buds opens out, and these doesn't They're all shet up
close and tight, and they never, never, never opens. Never mind how much
sun they get, never mind how much rain or how much drouth, whether it's
cold or hot, them posies stay shet up tight, kind o' buddy, and not
finished and humly. But if you pick 'em open, real careful, with a
pin,--I've done it,--you find they're dreadful pretty inside.

You couldn't see a posy that was finished off better, soft and nice,
with pretty little stripes painted on 'em, and all the little things
like threads in the middle, sech as the open posies has, standing up,
with little knots on their tops, oh, so pretty,--you never did! Makes
you think real hard, that does; leastways, makes me. What's they that
way for? If they ain't never goin' to open out, what's the use o' havin'
the shet-up part so slicked up and nice, with nobody never seem' it?
Folks has different names for 'em, dumb foxgloves, blind genshuns, and
all that, but I allers call 'em the shet-up posies.

Well, 't was one o' that kind o' posy I was goin' to tell you about.
'Twas one o' the shet-uppest and the buddiest of all on 'em, all
blacky-blue and straight up and down, and shet up fast