Later, the little scarlet
pimpernel charmed me. It seemed more than a flower; it was like a
human thing. I knew it by its homely name of 'poor man's weather
glass.' It was so much wiser than I; for when the sky was yet without
a cloud, softly it clasped its small red petals together, folding its
golden heart in safety from the shower that was sure to come. How
could it know so much?"
Whatever sorrows life brought to her, and they were many and of the
heaviest, this exquisite enjoyment of nature, the tender love and care
for every created thing within her reach, always stayed her heart. To
see her lift a flower in her fingers,--fingers which gave one a sense
of supporting everything which she touched, expressive, too, of
fineness in every fibre, although strong and worn with labor,--to see
her handle these wonderful creatures which she worshiped, was
something not to be forgotten. The lines of Keats,--
"Open afresh your rounds of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!"
were probably oftener flitting through her mind or from her lips than
through the mind or from the lips of any since Keats wrote them. She
remembered that he said he thought his "intensest pleasure in life had
been to watch the growth of flowers," but she was sure he never felt
their beauty more devoutly "than the little half-savage being who
knelt, like a fire-worshiper, to watch the unfolding of those golden
disks."
The time came at last, as it comes to every human being, for asking
the reason of the faith that was in her.
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