ngs in her lap,
and felt her tears upon his cheek as she kissed and blessed her boy.

But the hour he loved the best was when, casting aside all care, he sat
on a low stool at her feet, and, with his head resting on her knee,
listened as she read aloud their evening chapter from the Book of Life;
he was then the child again, not the toiling little miner-lad!--and oh,
it was so peaceful!

'"Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they
spin,"' read the mother one evening.

'But, mother, what are lilies like? I have never seen one, you know,'
asked the boy, when she had ceased reading and had closed the book.

In simple language, she endeavoured to describe to her town-born child
the exquisite beauties of the flowers of the field, and he, with an
innate love of the beautiful, caught readily at all she said, and seemed
as though he saw them all as she depicted.

'How I should love to be where there are always flowers!' he exclaimed;
'it must be like paradise! But those I have seen always close up at
night. I wish there was one here that opened of an evening, as if to
greet me when I come home!'

I know not how it happened, but the next night, when little Davie
entered his home, a delicious perfume filled the air, and standing in
the cottage window was an Evening Primrose, with its petals fully
expanded.

'Mother, mother,' cried the boy, 'my wish has come true! here is a
flower opening its blossoms to bid me welcome home;' and in excess of
delight he knelt and kissed his treasure again and again. And words
cannot express the love he bestowed upon the plant; it was to him an
unfeigned joy to watch the growing of each leaf, the gradual unfolding
of each fresh bud; and every night, on his return from work, his first
thought, after the thought for his mother, was of his sweet Evening
Primrose.

Those who gather flowers at will, prize them for a while, then cast them
carelessly aside, can form no idea of the all-absorbing love the little
miner lad evinced for his one fair flower; it was his sole treasure, and
he ever watched and tended it lovingly and well.

But time passed on, and it was Davie's last day in the coal-mine. He was
going to exchange that toilsome life, so uncongenial to his taste, but
which stern necessity had made him adopt, for a new and brighter
occupation, one, too, for which he had always ardently longed. The
manager of whom he had spoken to his mother had frequently noticed the