wee woman's garden was more beautiful than
before because of them.

"'Tis the prettiest garden in the king's country," said every one who
passed; and what they said was no more than what was true.

But as for the neighbor's dooryard it was as bare and ugly as ever.
The heap of dirt and ashes grew larger every day; and whenever the
wind blew from the east it brought a whirl of its trash into the wee
woman's garden just as it had always done.

The wee woman looked each morning to see if the magic of the flower
had begun to work but morning after morning nothing changed.

"It is long waiting and weary watching for magic things to work," said
she to herself; but because of what her fairy godmother had told her,
she tended the flower from day to day, and hoped in her heart that
something might come of it yet.

By and by the blossoms of the flower faded and fell and after them
came the seed. Hundreds and hundreds of feathery seed there were, and
one day the wind from the west came by, and blew them away in a whirl
over the fence and into the neighbor's dooryard. No one saw them go,
not even the wee woman knew what had become of them; and as for the
dooryard, it was as ugly as ever with its ash heap and its trash.
Everybody who passed it turned their eyes away from it.

[Illustration: WHILE SHE WAS WATCHING AND WAITING, THE FLOWER BURST
INTO BLOOM.]

The wee woman herself would look at it no longer.

"I will look at the magic flower instead," she said to herself, and so
she did. Early and late she tended the plant and worked to make her
garden fair and lovely; but she kept her eyes from the dooryard. And
if the wind from the east blew trash among her flowers she raked it
away and burned it up and troubled no more about it.

Summer slipped into autumn and autumn to winter and the flowers slept;
but at the first peep of spring the wee woman's garden budded and
bloomed once more; and one day as she worked there, with her back to
the dooryard, she heard passers-by call out in delight:

"Of all the gardens in the king's country there are none so pretty as these
two," and when she looked around in surprise to see what they meant she saw
that the neighbor's dooryard was full of flowers--hundreds and hundreds of
lovely blossoms, every one as rosy as the little clouds at sunrise. They
covered the heap of dirt and ashes, they clustered about the door stone;
they filled the corners; and in the midst of them was the neighbor, r