So Eline hid in her heart the things she knew and the things she would have told, as she had hidden in her soul at the river of forgetfulness the memory of the king’s garden of delight. And she took her way into the world with messages of love and of hope, such simple messages as the children understood, better sometimes than their elders. She told the children many beautiful fairy stories and they listened eagerly. They did not know that these were the stories which she had told to the learned ones of the earth and which were really true, though they had not believed.

The children listened, and they said: “It is beautiful. Some day we will seek out such a beautiful world as that of which the stories tell.”

SHE TOLD THE CHILDREN STORIES

SHE TOLD THE CHILDREN STORIES

There were houses, too, which they built—little toy houses with toy bricks. But Eline showed them how to shape the bricks and how to make each brick fit in its proper place so that never a one should lose its worth. And Eline showed the children how that behind the building of beautiful mansions there was the beautiful thought that made the masonry so noble a work, though it were only toy masonry. And the children understood.

In their games they had done each his best and they did well. But Eline showed them games in which they all acted together, even the little ones helping and sharing. It was wonderful to them that they had not thought of this before, because now they found that they could do more than ever they had done when each worked alone and for himself.

Near the city where they dwelt was a vast plain full of great boulders, which they could have made into a great park and a beautiful garden; but the people of the city cared not for such things and would not help them. By themselves they knew not how to move the rocks. So it remained a waste of wild growth, except in those places where the children had moved one by one, and with great difficulty, the smaller stones.

Now Eline bid them take a strong rope. “For,” said she, “we will clear that plain, and it shall be for a dwelling and a garden for all.” She was thinking of the king’s garden.

The children looked at her in astonishment as though they wondered if she meant the thing she said.

“We have no rope,” they said, “and none will give us any.”

“There is your rope,” said Eline, pointing out the overgrown plain, where, amid the rocks in the great patches from which they had slowly and painfully drawn the smaller stones, grew masses of pale blue flowers, beautiful, delicate little blossoms, like wind-flowers.

Again the children looked at her, questioningly; not as the people at first had done, but trustingly, though they knew not what she would have them do, but sought to learn her wishes.

So at her bidding they gathered all the ripened stalks of the little flowers and laid them out in the sun as she directed.

Almost it seemed a pity to destroy the plants. One little worker asked Eline of this matter for he loved the flowers and was sorry to see them gathered and dried.

“Does it not hurt the flowers to pluck them?” he asked. “Some say that you can talk with them as with all living things, and you can tell if the flowers do not suffer in the gathering, although they are old and ripe.”

His was a loving heart and Eline saw that he asked this out of no mere curiosity. Gently she touched his forehead with her finger.

“Look!” she said. “Look and listen, for I have opened the seeing eye to you.”