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[Pg 139] <h2>The Great Lady's Chief-Mourner.</h2> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> It was a large white house that stood on a hill. In front stretched a beautiful garden full of all kinds of rare flowers, on to which opened the windows of the sitting-rooms. Everything was handsome and stately, and the lady who owned it was handsomer and statelier than her house. In her velvet dress she sat under the shade of a sweeping cedar tree; with a crowd of obsequious relations round her, trying to anticipate her lightest wishes. "How nice it must be to be rich," thought the little kitchen-maid as she looked out through the trellis work that hid the kitchens at the side of the great house. "How happy my mistress must be. How much I should like to try just for one day what it feels like!"—and she went back with a sigh to her work in the gloomy kitchen. Through the latticed window she could see nothing but the paved yard, and an old tin biscuit box that stood on the window-sill, and contained two little green shoots sprouting up from the dark mould.[Pg 140] This little ugly box was the kitchen-maid's greatest treasure. Every day she watered it and watched over it, for she had brought the seeds from the tiny garden of her own home, and many sunny memories clustered about them. She was always looking forward to the day when the first blossoms would unfold, and now it really seemed that two buds were forming on the slender stems. The little kitchen-maid smiled with joy as she noticed them. "I shall have flowers, too!" she said to herself hopefully. One day, as the mistress of the house walked on the terrace by the vegetable garden, the little kitchen-maid came past suddenly with a basket of cabbages. She smiled and curtsied so prettily that the great lady nodded to her kindly, and threw her a beautiful red rose she carried in her hand. The kitchen-maid could hardly believe her good fortune. She picked up the flower and ran with it to her bedroom, where she put it in a cracked jam-pot in water; and the whole room seemed full of its fragrance—just as the little kitchen-maid's heart was all aglow with gratitude at the kind act of the great lady. Time passed, and the little kitchen-maid's rose withered; but the slender plants in the tin box expanded into flower, and all the yard seemed brighter for their white petals. One day the mistress of the house fell ill. Doctors went and came, crowds of relations besieged the house, an air of gloom hung over the bright garden. The little kitchen-maid waited anxiously for news; and[Pg 141] tears rolled down her face as she heard the Church bell tolling for the death of the great lady. A grand funeral started from the white house on the hill. Carriages containing relations, who tried vainly to twist their faces into an expression of the grief they were supposed to be feeling. Wreaths of the purest hot-house flowers covered the coffin—wreaths for which the relations had given large sums of money; but not one woven with sorrowful care by the hand of a real lover. The sod was patted down, the dry-eyed mourners departed; and some square yards of bare earth were all that now belonged to the great lady. When everyone had left, the little kitchen-maid crept from behind some bushes, where she had been hiding. Her face was tear-stained, and she carried in her hand two slender white flowers. They were the plants grown with such loving care in the old tin box on the window-sill; and she laid them with a sigh amongst the rich wreaths and crosses. "Good-bye, dear mistress! I have nothing else to bring you," she whispered; and never dreamed that her gift had been the most beautiful of any—her simple love and tears. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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