ced by her deep longing and
confirmed by the warm sunlight; and so she remained standing in
confidence in the snow in her white garment, bending her head even
while the snow-flakes fell thick and heavy, and the icy winds swept
over her.

"You'll break!" they said, "and fade, and fade! What did you
want out here? Why did you let yourself be tempted? The Sunbeam only
made game of you. Now you have what you deserve, you summer gauk."

"Summer gauk!" she repeated in the cold morning hour.

"O summer gauk!" cried some children rejoicingly; "yonder stands
one--how beautiful, how beautiful! The first one, the only one!"

These words did the Flower so much good, they seemed to her like
warm sunbeams. In her joy the Flower did not even feel when it was
broken off. It lay in a child's hand, and was kissed by a child's
mouth, and carried into a warm room, and looked on by gentle eyes, and
put into water. How strengthening, how invigorating! The Flower
thought she had suddenly come upon the summer.

The daughter of the house, a beautiful little girl, was confirmed,
and she had a friend who was confirmed, too. He was studying for an
examination for an appointment. "He shall be my summer gauk," she
said; and she took the delicate Flower and laid it in a piece of
scented paper, on which verses were written, beginning with summer
gauk and ending with summer gauk. "My friend, be a winter gauk." She
had twitted him with the summer. Yes, all this was in the verses,
and the paper was folded up like a letter, and the Flower was folded
in the letter, too. It was dark around her, dark as in those days when
she lay hidden in the bulb. The Flower went forth on her journey,
and lay in the post-bag, and was pressed and crushed, which was not at
all pleasant; but that soon came to an end.

The journey was over; the letter was opened, and read by the
dear friend. How pleased he was! He kissed the letter, and it was
laid, with its enclosure of verses, in a box, in which there were many
beautiful verses, but all of them without flowers; she was the
first, the only one, as the Sunbeams had called her; and it was a
pleasant thing to think of that.

She had time enough, moreover, to think about it; she thought of
it while the summer passed away, and the long winter went by, and
the summer came again, before she appeared once more. But now the
young man was not pleased at all. He took hold of the letter very
roughly, and threw the verses away, s