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“Are you really glad to see me?” said Bessie in her frankest way, with a very gratified smile. “I was afraid you might think it was very odd in me to come. I used to like so much to call upon you with mamma when I was a little girl! And the other day I saw you in your conservatory, and I have wished to come and see you ever since.”

“I am very glad to see you, my dear,” said Miss Sydney, for the second time. “I have been quite forgotten by the young people of late years. I was sorry to miss Mrs. Thorne’s call. Is she quite well? I meant to return it one day this week, and I thought only last night I would ask about you. You have been abroad, I think?”

Was not this an auspicious beginning? I cannot tell you all that happened that afternoon, for I have told so long a story already. But you will imagine it was the beginning of an intimacy that gave great pleasure, and did great good, to both the elder woman and the younger. It is hard to tell the pleasure which the love and friendship of a fresh, bright girl like Bessie Thorne, may give an older person. There is such a satisfaction in being convinced that one is still interesting and still lovable, though the years that are gone have each kept some gift or grace, and the possibilities of life seem to have been realized and decided. There are days of our old age when there seems so little left in life, that living is a mere formality. This busy world seems done with the old, however dear their memories of it, however strong their claims upon it. They are old: their life now is only waiting and resting. It may be quite right that we sometimes speak of second childhood, because we must be children before we are grown, and the life to come must find us, ready for service. Our old people have lived in the world so long; they think they know it so well: but the young man is master of the trade of living, and the man only his blundering apprentice.

Miss Sydney’s solemnest and most unprepared servant was startled to find Bessie Thorne and his mistress sitting cosily together before the dining-room fire. Bessie had a paper full of cut flowers to leave at the Children’s Hospital on her way home. Miss Sydney had given liberally to the contribution for that object; but she never had suspected how interesting it was until Bessie told her, and she said she should like to go some day, and see the building and its occupants for himself. And the girl told her of other interest that were near her kind young heart,–not all charitable interests,–and they parted intimate friends.

“I never felt such a charming certainty of being agreeable,” wrote Bessie that night to a friend of hers. “She seemed so interesting in every thing, and, as I told you, so pleased with my coming to see her. I have promised to go there very often. She told me in the saddest way that she had been feeling so old and useless and friendless, and she was very confidential. Imagine her being confidential with me! She seemed to me just like myself as I was last year,–you remember–just beginning to realize what life ought to be, and trying, in a frightened, blind kind of way to be good and useful. She said she was just beginning to understand her selfishness. She told me I had done her ever so much good; and I couldn’t help the tears coming into my eyes. I wished so much you were there, or some one who could help her more; but I suppose God knew when he sent me. Doesn’t it seem strange that an old woman should talk to me in this way, and come to me for help? I am afraid people would laugh at the very idea. And only to think of her living on and on, year after year, and then being changed so! She kissed me when I came away, and I carried the flowers to the hospital. I shall always be fond of that conservatory, because if I hadn’t stopped to look in that day, I might never have thought of her.

“There was one strange thing happened, which I must tell you about, though it is so late. She has grown very much interested in an old candy-woman, and told me about her; and do you know that this evening uncle Jack came in, and asked if we knew of anybody who would do for janitress–at the Natural History Rooms, I think he said. There is good pay and she would just sell catalogues, and look after things a little. Of course the candy-woman may not be competent; but, from what Miss Sydney told me, I think she is just the person.”

The next Sunday the minister read this extract from “Queen’s Gardens” in his sermon. Two of his listeners never had half understood its meaning before as they did then. Bessie was in church, and Miss Sydney suddenly turned her head, and smiled at her young friend, to the great amazement of the people who sat in the pews near by. What could have come over Miss Sydney?

“The path of a good woman is strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. ‘Her feet have touched the meadow, and left the daisies rosy.’ Flowers flourish in the garden of one who loves them. A pleasant magic it would be if you could flush flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if a look had the power not only to cheer, but to guard them. This you would think a great thing? And do you think it not a greater thing that all this, and more than this, you can do for fairer flowers than these,–flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and will love you for having loved them,–flowers that have eyes like yours, and thoughts like yours, and lives like yours?”