t enjoyable things that could
be. Every new page of the catalogue, every new detail of Norton's plan,
tugged at her heart-strings. She wanted to get those plants and
flowers. A few delicate tea roses, some crimson blush roses, some pots
of delicious purple heliotropes with spicy breath; two or three--or
four--great double carnations; bunches of violets, sweetest of all; she
wanted these! Then some azaleas, larger of course, to fill up the
shelves and make a beautiful show of colour, as Norton desired. Her
imagination went over and over the catalogue, always picking these out
for her choice; and then imagination took them to the little room
upstairs, which was going to be such a lovely little greenhouse, and
saw them there and almost smelt their fragrance. It would be so
pleasant to take care of them; she fancied herself watering them and
dressing them, picking off the dead leaves and tying up the long
wreaths of vines, and putting flowers into Mrs. Laval's stem glass for
her dressing table. But what use? she had not the money to buy the
plants, if she went on with her plans for Sarah's behoof; no counting
nor calculating could come to any other conclusion. She thought of it
by day and she thought of it by night; and the more she thought, the
more her desires grew. Then too, the wish to please Norton was a very
serious element in her cogitations. To disappoint him by utterly
failing to do all he wished and counted upon from her, was very hard to
do and very disagreeable to face. But Sarah? Matilda could not change
her line of action, nor divert more than one dollar from the fund saved
for her benefit. One dollar, Matilda thought, might be given for
flowers; but what would one dollar be worth, with all one side of the
little greenhouse to be filled.

It is not easy to tell, how much trouble all this question gave
Matilda. She thought it was quite strange and notable, that just when
she was trying to accomplish so right a thing as the helping of that
poor family in the cellar, this temptation of flowers should come up to
make it hard. In one of her windows stood three little pots, in which
three hyacinths were already bursting through the brown earth and
showing little stout green points of leaf buds which promised nicely
for other buds by and by. They had been a delight to Matilda's heart
only a week ago; now, it seemed as if that vision of heliotropes and
roses and geraniums had somehow swallowed them up.

When she wen