d
housewife, herself, came out to receive the parcels and to hear the
latest news from town. Oftener, the children of the household were
the messengers, for Barnabas' pockets were always well filled with
candy on town days. At one place Barnabas stopped at a barn by the
roadside and surreptitiously deposited a suspicious looking package.
When he was in front of the next farmhouse a man came out with anxious
mien.

"All right, Fred!" hailed Barnabas with a knowing wink. "I was afeerd
you'd not be on the watchout. I left it in the manger."

They did not reach the farm until the dinner hour, and the conversation
was maintained by M'ri and Barnabas on marketing matters. David spent
the afternoon in being initiated in field work. At supper, M'ri asked
him suddenly:

"To whom did you give the flowers, David?"

"I've made a story to it, Aunt M'ri, and I'm going to tell it to
Janey. Then you can hear."

M'ri smiled, and questioned him no further.

When the day was done and the "still hour" had come, Janey and David,
hand in hand, came around the house and sat down at her feet. It was
seldom that any one intruded at this hour, but she knew that David had
come to tell his story.

"Begin, Davey," urged Janey impatiently.

"One day, when a boy was going to town, his aunt gave him a big
bouquet of pink roses. She told him to give them to some one who
looked as if they needed flowers. So when the boy got to town he
walked up Main Street and looked at every one he met. He hoped to see
a little sick child or a tired woman who had no flowers of her own;
but every one seemed to be in a hurry, and very few stopped to look at
flowers or anything else. Those that did look turned away as if they
did not see them, and some seemed to be thinking, 'What beautiful
flowers!' and then forgot them.

"At last he met a tall, stern man dressed in fine clothes. He looked
very proud, but as if he were tired of everything. When he saw the
flowers he didn't turn away, but kept his eyes on them as if they made
him sad and lonesome in thinking of good times that were over. So the
boy asked him if he would not like the flowers. The man looked
surprised and asked the boy what his name was. When he heard it, he
remembered that he had been attorney for the boy's father. He took him
up into an office marked private, and he gave the boy some good
advice, and talked to him about his mother, which made the boy feel
bad. But the man comforted him and to