CELIA’S share of the flowers was lovely. She buried her face in the blooms again and again, and seemed unable to get enough of their sweetness.

They had spent the entire morning in the woods hunting for treasures, she and her particular friend, Helen Beardsley. Helen attended another Sunday-school, so they had carefully divided the flowers, for they were to be used in decorating the church for the Easter service.

“You will smell all the sweetness out of those things, child,” said Miss Agatha Foster, looking up from the bit of satin she was carefully embroidering. Miss Agatha was Celia’s oldest sister.

“O, no, I won’t!” said Celia, laughing; “they have all the sweetness of the woods in them. You can’t think how the woods smelled this morning! It seemed just like heaven.”

Agatha and the middle sister, Lorene, looked at each other and laughed.

“What an idea!” said Lorene; “it is the first time I ever heard the woods compared to heaven.”

Mrs. Foster came into the room at that moment, and stopped by the table near the door to arrange the books; there was a tired, somewhat troubled look on her face. “Poor Hester has had to be disappointed again about going home,” she said.

“Why, mother,” said Agatha, “that is really too bad. It is the third Saturday she has missed, and their baby is sick, you know.”

“I know it,” said Mrs. Foster, looking more troubled still; “but what can I do? There will be company to tea, and cook cannot leave the kitchen to answer the bell; she can not even attend to the downstairs bell; it rings every few minutes on Saturdays; besides, there is extra work for her to do, and somebody must set the table for her. I don’t suppose either of you could give her a lift, could you, and let Hester go?”

There was inquiry in the mother’s tone, but no expectation. Agatha lifted her eyebrows, but there was a difficult spot in her embroidery just then, so she made no reply; but Lorene turned quite away from the piano to answer:

“Why, mother, how could we? I have my practicing to do; I have to sing twice to-morrow, you know. Of course that would not take me long, but we couldn’t run to the door every time the bell rang, could we, and receive callers at the same time?”

“And as for setting the table,” said Agatha, who had righted her embroidery and was taking neat stitches, “I never could get all the things on a table. It wouldn’t be possible for me to set it for company.”

“I suppose it cannot be arranged,” said Mrs. Foster. “I must finish Grandma’s cap so she can wear it this evening; her other is really unfit, and I have several stitches to take for Celia, as well. Hester must wait another week. I told her so; but she seemed so disappointed that I wondered if there were not some way to plan it.”

“Perhaps she can run down there after tea to see how the baby is,” Lorene said, but Mrs. Foster shook her head. “Cook will need her to look after things in the kitchen while she waits on table, and it will be quite dark before we shall be through; she could not go alone after dark.”

It was Agatha’s turn to sigh. “We need a second girl,” she said; “it is ridiculous for a family of our size to try to get along with only cook, and that little bit of a Hester.”

“We shall certainly have to get along,” was her mother’s answer, spoken with quiet positiveness; “you know as well as I that we can not afford more help this season.”

Meantime Celia, her fingers still busy with the masses of flowers she was trying to arrange in a basket for carrying, had listened, her face growing more and more gravely thoughtful.

It was Sabbath evening in her thoughts, and she was in the Christian Endeavor meeting, listening to Agatha’s voice while she quoted from some grand old writer a thought like this: “We plan our Easter offerings, and beautify His temple for the glad day, and that is well; but we are to remember that as there would have been no Easter had He not given Himself, so the highest and best offering we can bring to Him is our unselfish consecrated selves.” Celia remembered the thrill with which she had listened. Agatha’s voice was like music, and the thoughts had seemed to fit her voice and make a poem of them, which had thrilled the beauty-loving heart of her young sister.

That was a week ago. Why should the words come back to her this afternoon, and ring in her heart like soft bells, calling her?

What had they to do with Hester, and the door-bells to answer, and the table to set for company, and a sick baby at home? “The highest and best offering we can bring to Him is our unselfish consecrated selves,” rang the bells in her heart, and her lips spoke: “Mother, may I take Hester’s place this afternoon, and let her go home? I can set the table; cook said I did it beautifully the last time.”

“You!” said her mother, in surprise, and both the sisters exclaimed. “Why, I thought, dear, your class was to meet at Marion’s to help arrange the flowers for the Easter service?”

“And I thought you were all invited to stay to tea at Marion’s?” added Agatha.

“So we are,” said Celia, answering them both in one; “but the girls can get along well enough without me. There are eight of them, and Marion’s Aunt Laura is going to show them how to arrange everything; and as for staying to tea, why, I can do that another time; and the baby is sick, and Hester is worried about him, I know. I should like to stay, mother, truly, if you will let me.”

“Let you, child! I shall be thankful for your help. To tell the truth, it seemed really selfish to keep Hester this afternoon, only I did not know how to plan; I was sure cook could not get along without help, though she was willing to try, because she felt sorry for Hester.”

“May I tell Hester about it, mother?” Celia asked, her eyes shining; “and she can carry my flowers and leave them at Marion’s.”

The flowers and their owner went away together, followed by Mrs. Foster. As for the young ladies, Agatha took pretty pink silk stitches on the lovely white satin and said not a word, while Lorene, turning to the piano, played a few bars, and sang softly:

breaking off to say: “Celia is a strange little girl, isn’t she?”

“Very strange,” answered Agatha, and she finished a pink bud as she spoke. She was making an Easter offering.

Nobody, it is safe to say, was more surprised at the turn of affairs than was Hester. She thought about it while she hurriedly combed the tangle of hair before her bit of broken glass, and made ready for going home. She was worried about the baby, but she divided her thoughts with this strange offering from Celia. She knew all about the Easter flowers, and the plans for the afternoon, and the high tea together at Marion’s lovely home. Celia’s talk had been full of it for the past two days. “I’d just like to know what made her do it, anyhow,” was Hester’s concluding question, offered aloud to the tin basin, in which she energetically washed her hands when the hair was done.

Easter morning was beautiful with sunshine and the song of birds, when Celia, looking from her window, saw Hester tripping around to the back door. She had been allowed to stay at home all night.

“O, Hester!” called Celia, “how is the baby?”

Hester looked up with a glad smile. “He is better,” she said, “ever so much better. Mother would have sent me word, only she expected me. He laughed and crowed as soon as he saw me, and you can’t think what a lovely time I had with him. Say, Celia, I want to know what made you do it?”

Celia’s sensitive face flushed, and she hesitated. How was she to tell Hester why she did it? From the next room came the notes of Lorene’s voice, as clear as any bird’s, rising high and pure:

“It was that,” she said simply.

“What?” asked Hester; “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That that Lorene is singing. He ‘lay in the grave,’ you know, for us. That is why it is Easter. I wanted to do something for somebody, and I hadn’t any big thing.”

“It was a big thing to me,” Hester said, and went inside the back door. Celia’s face was just a trifle shadowed. Despite every effort to put it away, the thought would come: “After all, I needn’t have given it up. The baby is better, and her mother would have sent her word, and another Saturday would have done just as well; and I missed all the beauty and the fun. I know how to arrange flowers.”

The shadow staid just a little during the Sunday-school hour. The girls were eager over the delights of the day before—eager to know how she could possibly have staid away. The lovely cross made largely of her own flowers, and bearing on their green background in pure white blossoms the words, “He is risen,” was the most beautiful floral decoration in the church. “Aunt Laura made it,” Marion said. “You did not deserve to have it arranged so beautifully; we thought you ought to have had interest enough to have come and seen it, anyhow. Why didn’t you?”

“Never mind now,” said Celia; “I cannot explain, only I thought I could not go.” Her offering seemed to her small and uncalled-for; she could not talk about it. Yet, before the morning prayer in church was over, the shadow had lifted. “I did it truly for Him,” said Celia softly, to herself; “He knows I did, and whether it was of use or not, it is all right.” And when Lorene sang, in a voice like an angel’s:

she could not help being glad that she did it.

That evening, when they were coming out of the Christian Endeavor meeting, the minister, who was shaking hands with the young people on every side, held in his left hand a single calla lily of rare beauty. As he held out his hand to Celia he laid the lily against her cheek and said: “That is for you, little girl. A token from the Master, I think, since he made it. Let me tell you something which will make it bloom for you forever. Hester came to me this evening to say that she wanted to belong to Jesus, and learn how to grow like him, just as you had.”

Pansy.