poorest child said, "It is beautiful in winter!"

So the little girl showed the boy everything, and suddenly the boy
grew up and was to go out into the wide world, far away to the hot
countries where the coffee grows. When they were to part the little
girl took an elder blossom from her wreath and gave it to him to keep.
He put it in a book, and the more he looked at the flower the fresher
it became so that he seemed, as it were, to breathe the forest air of
home. Then he plainly saw the little girl looking out with her clear
blue eyes from between the petals of the flower and she whispered,

"Here it is beautiful in spring, summer, autumn, and winter!" and
hundreds of pictures glided through his thoughts.

Many years went by. He seemed to be an old man and sat with his wife
under the blossoming elder tree. The little maiden with the blue eyes
and with the wreath of elder blossoms in her hair sat up in the tree,
and nodded to both of them, and said, "To-day is our golden wedding
day!" Then she took two flowers out of her hair and kissed them, and
they gleamed, first, like silver, then like gold. When she laid them
on the heads of the old people, each changed to a golden crown. There
they both sat like a King and Queen, under a fragrant tree that
looked quite like an elder bush; and he told his old wife the story of
the Elder Tree Mother.

"Some call me Elder Tree Mother," said the little girl in the tree,
"others the Dryad, but my real name is Remembrance. It is I who sit in
the tree that grows on and on, and I can think back and tell stories.
Let me see if you still have your flower?"

The old man opened his book; there lay the elder blossom as fresh as
if it had only just been placed there; and Remembrance nodded, and the
two old people with the golden crowns on their heads sat in the red
evening sunlight, and they closed their eyes, and--the story was
finished.

The little boy lay in his bed and did not know whether he had been
dreaming or had heard a tale told. The tea-pot stood on the table, but
no elder bush was growing out of it.

"How beautiful that was!" said the little boy. "Mother, I have been in
the hot countries."

"Yes, I am sure of that!" replied the mother. "When one drinks two
cups of hot elder tea one very often gets into the hot countries." And
she covered him up well that he might not take cold. "You have slept
well," she said.

"But where is the Elder Tree Mother?" asked the little lad.