FullReads

MOTTO FOR THE MOTHER

Wisdom comes with all we see,
God writes His lessons in each flower,
And ev’ry singing bird or bee
Can teach us something of His power.

PART I.

Grandmother’s garden was a beautiful place,–more beautiful than all the shop windows in the city; for there was a flower or grass for every color in the rainbow, with great white lilies, standing up so straight and tall, to remind you that a whole rainbow of light was needed to make them so pure and white.

There were pinks and marigolds and princes’ feathers, with bachelor’s buttons and Johnny-jump-ups to keep them company. There were gay poppies and gaudy tulips, and large important peonies and fine Duchess roses in pink satin dresses.

There were soft velvet pansies and tall blue flags, and broad ribbon-grasses that the fairies might have used for sashes; and mint and thyme and balm and rosemary everywhere, to make the garden sweet; so it was no wonder that every year, the garden was full of visitors.

Nobody noticed these visitors but Grandmother and Lindsay.

Lindsay was a very small boy, and Grandmother was a very old lady; but they loved the same things, and always watched for these little visitors, who came in the early spring-time and stayed all summer with Grandmother.

Early, early in the spring, when the garden was bursting into bloom in the warm southern sunshine, Grandmother and Lindsay would sit in the arbor, where the vines crept over and over in a tangle of bloom, and listen to a serenade. Music, music everywhere! Over their heads, behind their backs, the little brown bees would fly, singing their song:–

“Hum, hum, hum!
Off and away!
To get some
Sweet honey to-day!”

while they found the golden honey cups, and filled their pockets with honey to store away in their waxen boxes at home.

One day, while Grandmother and Lindsay were watching, a little brown bee flew away with his treasure, and lighting on a rose, met with a cousin, a lovely yellow butterfly.

“I think they must be talking to each other,” said Grandmother, softly. “They are cousins, because they belong to the great insect family, just as your papa and Uncle Bob and Aunt Emma and Cousin Rachel all belong to one family,–the Greys; and I think they must be talking about the honey that they both love so well.”

“I wish I could talk to a butterfly,” said Lindsay, longingly; and Grandmother laughed.

“Play that I am a butterfly,” she proposed. “What color shall I be?–a great yellow butterfly, with brown spots on my wings?”

So Grandmother played that she was a great yellow butterfly with brown spots on its wings, and she said to Lindsay:–

“Never in the world can you tell, little boy, what I used to be?”

“A baby butterfly,” guessed Lindsay.

“Guess again,” said the butterfly.

“A flower, perhaps; for you are so lovely,” declared Lindsay, gallantly.

“No, indeed!” answered the butterfly; “I was a creeping, crawling caterpillar.”

“Now, Grandmother, you’re joking!” cried Lindsay, forgetting that Grandmother was a butterfly.

“Not I,” said the butterfly. “I was a crawling, creeping caterpillar, and I fed on leaves in your Grandmother’s garden until I got ready to spin my nest; and then I wrapped myself up so well that you would never have known me for a caterpillar; and when I came out in the Spring I was a lovely butterfly.”

“How beautiful!” said Lindsay. “Grandmother, let us count the butterflies in your garden.” But they never could do that, though they saw brown and blue and red and white and yellow ones, and followed them everywhere.

PART II.

It might have been the very next day that Grandmother took her knitting to the summer house. At all events it was very soon; and while she and Lindsay were wondering when the red rose bush would be in full bloom, Lindsay saw, close up to the roof, a queer little house, like a roll of crumpled paper, with a great many front doors; and, of course, he wanted to know who lived there.