y thoughts and
feelings; and thus rendered a pleasant summer home for the gentle, happy
child, whose bosom flower will never fade. And now, dear Annie, I must
go; but every springtime, with the earliest flowers, will I come again
to visit you, and bring some fairy gift. Guard well the magic flower,
that I may find all fair and bright when next I come."

Then, with a kind farewell, the gentle Fairy floated upward through the
sunny air, smiling down upon the child, until she vanished in the soft,
white clouds; and little Annie stood alone in her enchanted garden,
where all was brightened with the radiant light, and fragrant with the
perfume of her fairy flower.

COMPANIONS

BY HELEN HUNT JACKSON

During the whole of one of a summer's hottest days I had the good
fortune to be seated in a railway car near a mother and four children,
whose relations with each other were so beautiful that the pleasure of
watching them was quite enough to make one forget the discomforts of the
journey.

It was plain that they were poor; their clothes were coarse and old, and
had been made by inexperienced hands. The mother's bonnet alone would
have been enough to have condemned the whole party on any of the world's
thoroughfares. I remembered afterward, with shame, that I myself had
smiled at the first sight of its antiquated ugliness; but her face was
one which it gave you a sense of rest to look upon--it was so earnest,
tender, true, and strong. It had little comeliness of shape or color in
it, it was thin, and pale; she was not young; she had worked hard; she
had evidently been much ill; but I have seen few faces which gave me
such pleasure. I think that she was the wife of a poor clergyman; and I
think that clergyman must be one of the Lord's best watchmen of souls.
The children--two boys and two girls--were all under the age of 12, and
the youngest could not speak plainly. They had had a rare treat; they
had been visiting the mountains, and they were talking over all the
wonders they had seen with a glow of enthusiastic delight which was
to be envied. Only a word-for-word record would do justice to their
conversation; no description could give any idea of it--so free, so
pleasant, so genial, no interruptions, no contradictions; and the
mother's part borne all the while with such equal interest and eagerness
that no one not seeing her face would dream that she was any other than
an elder sister.

In the course of the day th