Dame Martha's cottage.

"I am sorry, Dame Martha," said she, "that I have nothing nice for
you to-day, but I thought perhaps you would like to have some flowers,
as it's Spring-time and you can't go out."

[Illustration]

"Indeed, Miss Patsey," said the sick woman, "you could'nt have brought
me anything that would do my heart more good. It's like hearing the
birds sing and sittin' under the hedges in the blossoms, to hear you
talk and to see them flowers."

Patsey was very much pleased, of course, at this, and after that she
brought Dame Martha a bouquet every day.

And soon the good woman looked for Patsey and her beautiful flowers as
longingly and eagerly as she looked for the rising of the sun.

Old Hans very seldom came to see her now, and she took no more of his
medicines. It was of no use, and she had paid him every penny that she
had to spare, besides a great many other things in the way of little
odds and ends that lay about the house. But when Patsey stopped in,
one afternoon, a month or two after she had brought the first bunch of
flowers, she said to the widow:

"Dame Martha, I believe you are a great deal better."

"Better!" said the good woman, "I'll tell you what it is, Miss Patsey,
I've been a thinking over the matter a deal for the last week, and
I've been a-trying my appetite, and a-trying my eyes, and a-trying how
I could walk about, and work, and sew, and I just tell you what it is,
Miss Patsey, I'm well!"

And so it was. The widow was well, and nobody could see any reason for
it, except good Dame Martha herself. She always persisted that it was
those beautiful bunches of flowers that Patsey had brought her every
day.

"Oh, Miss Patsey!" she said, "If you'd been a-coming to me with them
violets and buttercups, instead of old Hans with his nasty bitter
yarbs, I'd a been off that bed many a day ago. There was nothing but
darkness, and the shadows of tomb-stones, and the damp smells of the
lonely bogs about his roots and his leaves. But there was the heavenly
sunshine in your flowers, Miss Patsey, and I could smell the sweet
fields, when I looked at them, and hear the hum of the bees!"

It may be that Dame Martha gave a little too much credit to Patsey's
flowers, but I am not at all sure about it. Certain it is, that the
daily visits of a bright young girl, with her heart full of kindness
and sympathy, and her hands full of flowers from the fragrant fields,
would be far more welcome and of