yly; but the lily
made no reply.

"Would you mind telling us how you came there?" asked the rose. "Being
full-blown, I couldn't sleep much, if I tried."

"I am perfectly willing to tell you, if the others care to listen," said
the pink flower, modestly.

"Pray go on," begged the daisy.

And "I have no objection," added the water-lily, in a gracious manner.

"One day," began the geranium blossom, growing a little pinker as its
companions all turned toward it, "a servant-maid tossed from a window a
withered bouquet into the street, and in the centre of this bouquet was
a slip of geranium which had been placed there because its crumpled
young leaves were so fresh and green. A poor little girl passing by
picked up this slip, and carried it to a wretched cellar, where she
lived in the greatest untidiness with her mother--a poor, weak,
complaining woman--and her two small sisters and eight-year-old brother.
Here she found a battered tin pail, which she filled with dirt from the
street, and in this dirt she planted the slip of geranium. 'See, mommy,'
she said, holding it up, as her mother raised her eyes from the coarse
garment she was making, 'I mean to take _awful_ good care of this, and
some day it may grow a flower, a beautiful flower, like those I see in
the windows of the big houses. Wouldn't that be lovely, mommy?' And she
climbed up on the shaky old wooden table, and placed the pail on the
ledge of the four-paned cellar window.

"But the window-panes were so covered with cobwebs and dirt that the
little of the blessed sunlight that found its way down there could not
get in at all. So Polly got the broom, and carefully swept away the dust
and the spider-webs, and then she washed and polished the four panes
until they shone again, and the very next afternoon a sunbeam came to
visit the geranium, and a tiny new leaf peeped out to greet it. When the
window was cleaned, the shelf (holding a few old tin pans) that hung
below it looked so dingy that Polly could not rest until she had
scrubbed it well. Nor did she stop there, but also scoured the old tin
things before she put them back in their places, until they almost
looked like new. And thus, from the very moment of my mother-plant's
arrival there, a change for the better began in that dreary cellar. It
seemed so natural, when Polly had the basin of water ready to sprinkle
the geranium, to wash the faces and hands of her little sisters and
brother first; and then, o