ms a pity if a
thing can't stop growing and be let alone and die if it wants to!"

But though it grumbled a trifle at first, it felt so much better after
Hester and her mother had spent the afternoon caring for it, that it
began to grow a little just out of gratitude,--and what do you think
happened?

"George Washington came and chopped it down with his little hatchet,"
said an eager person in front.

"The lame girl came to look at it," sang out a small chap in the back
row.

No, (the young girl answered, with an irrepressible smile), it was a
cherry-tree that George Washington chopped, Lucy; and I told you,
Horatio, that the poor lame girl could n't walk a step. But the sun
began to shine,--that is the first thing that happened. Day after day
the sun shone, because everything seems to help the people and the
things that help themselves. The rich earth gave everything it had to
give for sap, and the warm air dried up the ugly moss that spoiled the
beauty of its trunk.

Then the lilac-bush was glad again, and it could hardly grow fast
enough, because it knew it would be behind time, at any rate; for of
course it could n't stand still, grumbling and doing nothing for weeks,
and get its work done as soon as the other plants. But it made sap all
clay long, and the buds grew into tiny leaves, and the leaves into
larger ones, and then it began to group its flower-buds among the
branches. By this time it was the week before Easter, and it fairly
sat up nights to work.

Hester knew that it was going to be more beautiful than it ever was in
its life before (that was because it had never tried so hard, though of
course Hester could n't know that), but she was only afraid that it
would n't bloom soon enough, it was so very late this spring.

But the very morning before Easter Sunday, Hester turned in her sleep
and dreamed that a sweet, sweet fragrance was stealing in at her open
window. A few minutes later she ran across her room, and lo! every
cluster of buds on the lilac-bush had opened into purple flowers, and
they were waving in the morning sunshine as if to say, "We are ready,
Hester! We are ready, after all!"

And one spray was pinned in the teacher's dress,--it was shabby and
black,--and she was glad of the flower because it reminded her of home.

And one spray stood in a vase on Hester's dining-table. There was
never very much dinner in Hester's house, but they did not care that
day, because the li