"
Two of our committee called one day at a house whose garden seemed to
have fallen into its ill condition after a very happy start. Its
mistress came to the door wearing a heart-weary look. The weather had
been very dry, she said in a melodious French accent, and she had not
felt so very well, and so she had not cared to struggle for a garden,
much less for a prize.
"But the weather," suggested her visitors, "had been quite as dry for
her competitors, and few of them had made so fair a beginning. To say
nothing of prizes, was not the garden itself its own reward?"
She shook her head drearily; she did not know that she should ever care
to garden any more.
"Why?" exclaimed one questioner persuasively, "you didn't talk so when I
was here last month!"
"No," was the reply, "but since three weeks ago--" and all at once up
came the stifled tears, filling her great black eyes and coursing down
her cheeks unhindered, "I los' my baby."
The abashed visitors stammered such apologies as they could. "They would
not have come on this untimely errand could they have known." They
begged forgiveness for their slowness to perceive.
"Yet do not wholly," they presently ventured to urge, "give up your
garden. The day may come when the thought that is now so bitter will, as
a memory, yield some sweetness as well, and then it may be that the
least of bitterness and the most of sweetness will come to you when you
are busy among your flowers.
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