ing's garden.

The children looked at her in astonishment as though they wondered if
she meant the thing she said.

"We have no rope," they said, "and none will give us any."

"There is your rope," said Eline, pointing out the overgrown plain,
where, amid the rocks in the great patches from which they had slowly
and painfully drawn the smaller stones, grew masses of pale blue
flowers, beautiful, delicate little blossoms, like wind-flowers.

Again the children looked at her, questioningly; not as the people at
first had done, but trustingly, though they knew not what she would have
them do, but sought to learn her wishes.

[Illustration]

So at her bidding they gathered all the ripened stalks of the little
flowers and laid them out in the sun as she directed.

Almost it seemed a pity to destroy the plants. One little worker asked
Eline of this matter for he loved the flowers and was sorry to see them
gathered and dried.

"Does it not hurt the flowers to pluck them?" he asked. "Some say that
you can talk with them as with all living things, and you can tell if
the flowers do not suffer in the gathering, although they are old and
ripe."

His was a loving heart and Eline saw that he asked this out of no mere
curiosity. Gently she touched his forehead with her finger.

"Look!" she said. "Look and listen, for I have opened the seeing eye to
you."

VIII

And the boy looked around in wonderment, amazed, and saw that the whole
great plain was full of teeming life which he had not before seen.
Fairies and elves peeped from every flower, gnomes and earthmen worked
and played and danced among the boulders. And where before was silence
but for the rustling of the leaves in the breeze, there rose a murmur of
many voices, like the humming of bees in the sunshine. The boy listened
and at once he knew what the flowers were whispering.

"There is a saying that the flax-people are being used for a mighty
work," said one little blue fairy to another.

"I heard a bee spreading the news," said another. "All the flax-people
are asked to give their dresses to help in clearing the plain for a
palace and a garden where kings may dwell--not kings of earth and of
little cities, but kings of wisdom whom nature loves to obey, and we
among her children."

"Body after body have I grown," said the other. "I have struggled and
striven to grow useful in this glorious brotherhood of nature, and m