Her flowers safe in the water, the little girl seated herself on a stone that seemed made purposely for her, it was cushioned so softly with moss; and overhead the boughs of the great trees bent towards her, and rustled and waved like so many fans, and shut her in so closely from the rest of the wood that you might have passed close by, and never guessed she was there.

The kitten went fast asleep in her lap, and Violet, folding her hands, looked up among the leaves, and across where the boughs parted a little into the wood, and down at her feet, where the grass grew so long and fine, and was sprinkled over with such pretty little leaves—as tiny, some of them, as Violet's finger nails, and yet as beautifully scolloped or pointed, and as perfectly finished, as the stoutest laurel or broadest oak leaf in the wood; and, noticing this, Violet wondered if God, who had taken as much pains in making little leaves as big ones, had not taken as much pains with, and didn't care as much for, little people as big ones.

Who knew but he loved her, in her ragged dress, just as well as Narcissa in all her finery, or even the tall, rich doctor, who tried to mend Toady's leg?

Then she listened, and felt how still it was there alone with the trees; and the sweet, low sounds that came through this stillness were beautiful as music.

Far off she could hear the cool, sparkling brook foaming and hurrying over its stony bed; and then the air came breathing through the trees, as if they sighed for joy; and each leaf trembled, and seemed rising to meet the air and fly away with it, and then, falling back again, nestled closer to its neighbor leaves, and whispered softly, as if it were making love to them.

But there came a louder rustling among the boughs, and a flutter of wings, and then burst forth a clear, wild song, so near that Violet held her breath; for a golden oriole had alighted close beside her, and chirped, and twittered, and trilled, as if he meant to say aloud what the leaves and the brook had been whispering.

When he paused, the leaves all clapped their hands for more; and oriole understood them, for he gave another and another song, waiting between each to wet his bill in some bunch of bright, juicy berries.

Violet did not suspect that the reason the sunshine looked so bright, and the shadows so cool and refreshing, and the leaves and brook so wide awake and so musical, was because the good fairies Love and Contentment were watching over her; and the beautiful purple light from Love's wings, and from Contentment's starry crown, and the fragrance from her lily urn, would make any, the dullest place, bright.

But as the bird flew away, Fairy Love whispered inside of Violet's heart, "The bird has gone to her nest. Isn't it time for Violet to be thinking about her nest, and the good mother, who will be there first if she does not make haste and run home?"

Love's voice was lower than the whisper of the leaves or the far-off murmur of the brook; but the little girl heard and obeyed it for all that.