This is not a flowery neighborhood. It's anything but
that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers; I smell
rose-leaves till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels,
on the floor; I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand--so--and
expect to make them rustle; I smell the white and the pink May in the
hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For I have seen
very few flowers indeed in my life."
"Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!" said her friend with a glance
toward their visitor, as if she would have asked him whether they were
given the child in compensation for her losses.
"So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!"
cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, "How
they sing!"
There was something in the face and action for the moment quite inspired
and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand again.
"I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell
better than other flowers. For when I was a little child," in a tone as
though it were ages ago, "the children that I used to see early in the
morning were very different from any others I ever saw. They were not
like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were
never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbors; they
never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises; and they
never mocked me.
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