ugh the Spirit of the Flowers had touched the naked
twigs with fairy fingers, waking them into glowing life for her who
never again was to shower her love and care upon them.

"These are my poppies. Did you ever come out in the morning to find
a hundred poppy faces smiling at you, and swaying and glistening and
rippling in the breeze? There they are, scarlet and pink, side by side
as only God can place them. And near the poppies I planted my pansies,
because each is a lesson to the other. I call my pansies little children
with happy faces. See how this great purple one winks his yellow eye,
and laughs!"

Her gray shawl had slipped back from her face and lay about her
shoulders, and the wind had tossed her hair into a soft fluff about her
head.

"We used to come out here in the early morning, my little Schwester and
I, to see which rose had unfolded its petals overnight, or whether this
great peony that had held its white head so high only yesterday, was
humbled to the ground in a heap of ragged leaves. Oh, in the morning she
loved it best. And so every summer I have made the garden bloom again,
so that when she comes back she will see flowers greet her.

"All the way up the path to the door she will walk in an aisle of
fragrance, and when she turns the handle of the old door she will find
it unlocked, summer and winter, day and night, so that she has only to
turn the knob and enter."

She stopped, abruptly. The light died out of her face. She glanced at
me, half defiantly, half timidly, as one who is not quite sure of what
she has said. At that I went over to her, and took her work-worn hands
in mine, and smiled down into the faded blue eyes grown dim with tears
and watching.

"Perhaps--who knows?--the little sister may come yet. I feel it. She
will walk up the little path, and try the handle of the door, and it
will turn beneath her fingers, and she will enter."

With my arm about her we walked down the path toward the old-fashioned
arbor, bare now except for the tendrils that twined about the lattice.
The arbor was fitted with a wooden floor, and there were rustic chairs,
and a table. I could picture the sisters sitting there with their sewing
during the long, peaceful summer afternoons. Alma Pflugel would be
wearing one of her neat gingham gowns, very starched and stiff, with
perhaps a snowy apron edged with a border of heavy crochet done by the
wrinkled fingers of Grossmutter Pflugel. On the rustic table the