ea.

"Take some lilacs, Pearl," she said, pointing to them. "They are
pretty, aren't they?"

"Oh, Martha!" Pearl cried, "you must be happy living with these
things. Don't you just wish you could gather up all the poor little
children? Mr. Donald was reading to us out of a magazine to-day, and
showing us the pictures of how they are crowded together in the
cities, and never see any grass, just all side walks and black dirt.
Wouldn't you love to let them all have a look and a smell and armful
and be happy for once?"

"I guess it doesn't do much good to be once if it doesn't last."

"Well, I don't know," Pearl said, after some deliberation. "I believe
it does. I've often heard Ma tell about the day she and Pa were
married, how the sun just danced on the flowers and the grass, and
she carried a big sheaf of lilacs, and when she came to this country,
and it was all so new and bare, and no flowers only the wild ones,
and she hadn't got used to them, she often thought of them lilacs and
pretty near smelled them again, and cried over them, and got real
happy just thinkin' of them. You know there's a lot in lilacs, more
than their beauty. Some flowers have a lot in them, just like people.
Now, there's the wild sunflower, it's a pretty flower, with real rich
colours, yellow and brown; but nobody ever cries over it, or has a
good time over it in any way, because it doesn't make you think of
anything."

"It's just a weed," Martha said with conviction.

"Well, now," Pearl went on, "even some weeds have something in them.
There's the blue cockle and the ball mustard. They're bad weeds, but
they're pretty. They've got a sort of a bold-as-brass look about
them, and they have to be pulled, but they're pretty."

"Yes; they're pretty," Martha agreed. She had often thought about the
cockle as she pulled it out of the garden. The flaming purple of it,
so strong and bold and defiant, seemed to mock her and sneer at her
sallow face and streaky, hay-coloured hair. In her best moments she
had often wondered how it could be so bad when it was so beautiful,
but there were times, too, when she had almost envied the bold and
evil cockle, and thought bitterly that somehow it had the best of it.

"But what's the use of its lovely flashing purple?" Pearl said, as if
in answer to her thoughts. "Nobody likes it, and it just gets rooted
up and flung in heaps. It only takes up room and spoils crops and
makes people mad. Look at the mignonette--i