There is ever so much fun in a pansy bed. If you have never had one, ask your papa or mamma to let you have one this summer. A few dozen plants will give you much pleasure.

There are so many little faces to know among them, and so many little family groups. Some grin at you like monkeys, others scowl, some seem to wink, some smile shyly, while others are curious and open-eyed. There is a white family delicately blue-veined—Colonial Dames, I call them. There are negroes of the darkest hue, Indians, and those that the sun seems to have bronzed. There are groups of Chinamen with their little “yellow kids.” Some are tattooed, and some have striped skin. Many wear ruffled bonnets, and some have beards. The little clusters are so erect and alert on a morning after a heavy dew that they seem like families off for an outing or school children waiting for a snap shot. There are lovely grandmothers wearing purple caps with white frills, and with faces though crinkled and wrinkled yet full of smiles and wisdom. There are sweethearts too, their little heads close together, and they whisper, whisper when the wind goes by.

What do you think? One day from out of my bowl of pansies which I had placed on the lunch table skipped two frisky “yellow kids.” I discovered them hand in hand skipping away. Their little figures were reflected in the polished surface of the table, and they seemed partners out of a Virginia reel. As I put them back in the bowl among their elders, I felt that I had wantonly interrupted a runaway.

Watch how the pansies love the rain! As they seem praying for it with bent heads in dry weather, so they seem a-quiver with thanksgiving after a shower.

There are many things you can do with your pansies. First, though, you must love them. You must teach pussy and the dog not to tramp over them. Every day you must take off all the faded flowers. You must water them and weed them. You will enjoy gathering a bouquet daily for the house, and if anybody is ill, papa or mamma or some one else you love, by all means carry them a bunch of your pansies.

In midsummer, when the fairies have pitched their tents about the sweet-scented bed, the blossoms will have become so many that if grandpa or grandma has a birthday, you can gather seventy or eighty (possibly ninety if you need so many) for a birthday gift. You will not see the fairies about the bed, for they come at midnight, but the dew-sprinkled tents are there, and the cluster of toadstools that the brownies like so well.

Do not forget to give some flowers to the poor children who stand outside your gate, and who wish for some for their very own. The children who have no garden love to look at yours.

Perhaps you have an older sister or brother who paints. If so, they may like some of your pansies to sketch, and to keep in the house in the winter when your real ones are tucked under the earth and snow.

You will find several live things in your flower bed; the bees, the butterflies, and once in a while a humming-bird. Sir Bumble, the bee who looks so heavy and clumsy, touches lightly the pansies, and the pansies like to have him about, for he is so lively and cheery, so do not drive him away. The light yellow and the deep yellow butterflies seem like the pansies themselves, flying off from their stems for a journey about the country. Who knows what the butterflies and the bees tell the flowers, or what messages the flowers send by the flying creatures that pay them visits? When you have pansy beds of your own perhaps you will be able to write me some stories, and then perhaps you can tell me what the butterflies, bees and pansies talk about.

Grace Marion Bryant.