some one of the gentlemen.

The young Scotch lady looked about for a flower, but none of them seemed
to please her, until, happening to glance over the fence, she espied the
fine, large thistle bush, full of bluish-red, sturdy-looking flowers.
She smiled as she saw it, and begged the son of the house to get one of
them for her.

"That is Scotland's flower," she said; "it grows and blossoms in our
coat of arms. Get that one yonder for me, please."

And he gathered the finest of the thistle flowers, though he pricked his
fingers as much in doing so as if it had been growing on a wild
rosebush.

She took the flower and put it in his buttonhole, which made him feel
greatly honored. Each of the other young men would gladly have given up
his graceful garden flower if he might have worn the one given by the
delicate hands of the Scotch girl. As keenly as the son of the house
felt the honor conferred upon him, the thistle felt even more highly
honored. It seemed to feel dew and sunshine going through it.

"It seems I am of more consequence than I thought," it said to itself.
"I ought by rights to stand inside and not outside the fence. One gets
strangely placed in this world, but now I have at least one of my
flowers over the fence--and not only there, but in a buttonhole!"

To each one of its buds as it opened, the thistle bush told this great
event. And not many days had passed before it heard--not from the people
who passed, nor yet from the twittering of little birds, but from the
air, which gives out, far and wide, the sounds that it has treasured up
from the shadiest walks of the beautiful garden and from the most
secluded rooms at the Hall, where doors and windows are left open--that
the young man who received the thistle flower from the hands of the
Scottish maiden had received her heart and hand as well.

"That is my doing!" said the thistle, thinking of the flower she had
given to the buttonhole. And every new flower that came was told of this
wonderful event.

"Surely I shall now be taken and planted in the garden," thought the
thistle. "Perhaps I shall be put into a flowerpot, for that is by far
the most honorable position." It thought of this so long that it ended
by saying to itself with the firm conviction of truth, "I shall be
planted in a flowerpot!"

It promised every little bud that came that it also should be placed in
a pot and perhaps have a place in a buttonhole--that being the highest
positio