“He might have made the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,
The oak tree and the cedar tree,
And not a flower at all.”
—Mary Howitt.
Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair leaning forward with her chin
on the window-sill looking down into her father’s untidy back yard.
The only pleasant thing in it was a lilac bush that was a marvel of
beauty when it was in bloom, but that had faded many weary days ago,
leaving ugly brown bunches where the lilacs had been; there were two
well-worn paths, one leading to the kitchen door, and the other to
the well, and nothing besides, excepting weeds with a background of
apple orchard. If Nettie had raised her eyes she would have seen
woods, and hills and fields of grain, a bit of road, a wooden bridge,
and a deep blue sky full of puffy, white clouds, but she would not
raise her eyes; when her back ached as it did to-day she never saw
anything but the weeds in the yard, especially those tall rag-weeds
growing close around the well. Her father had promised to “clear up”
the yard after planting, but planting had come and gone, and he was
still too busy.
“Oh, if I were only able to pull weeds,” she sighed.
It was a very gentle sigh, she was not strong enough to sigh heavily.
Three years ago she could shout and run, to-day she could not move
her feet, and there were many days during the year when she must lie
still in bed.
In winter, she had a south room, at the front of house, where she saw
the rising and the setting sun, and had a good view of all the people
who passed back and forth from the village; in summer, she had this
cool north room that looked out on the back yard.
The back yard was full of interest to her—when she could forget the
weeds. Twenty times a day her mother came to the kitchen door to look
up at her, and tell her how the work was going on; she knew what was
cooking by the odors that came up to her and what all the noises
meant, from the click of the egg-beater to the thud of the
churn-dasher, and she saw old Mrs. Finch when she came to borrow
baking powder, and the pedlars, and book-agents, and apple-tree men;
but best of all she liked to watch for her father to come in to
dinner and supper.
In blue flannel shirt and big straw hat, tired and dusty and warm, he
never failed to look up and call: “Why, hello, you there, daughter?”
just as if she were well, and had only run up stairs for a moment.
And her weak, “I’m here, father,” made the sadness and the happiness
of his life.
Nettie moved her head slightly, and gained a view of the pasture
where three cows were feeding; she could not see the brook, but she
knew that it ran through the pasture, and she knew there were blue
lilies all along the brook, some of them growing in the water.
How she longed to see those lilies growing in the water!
She was only ten years old the last time she saw those lilies: she
was driving home the cows at night, in her pink calico dress and
stout leather shoes, with her father’s old straw hat on the back of
her head, “a picture of a happy, healthy, country lassie,” her father
thought as he watched her standing by the clump of lilies while she
waited for the cows to drink. She was thinking she would gather a big
bunch of the lilies as soon as they were opened the next morning—but
the pet calf came behind her and butted her down, and her father
carried home in his arms a helpless little daughter. And there were
tiger lilies in bloom; she could not see the place where they were
growing, but it was only a quarter of a mile away in a fence corner,
such a patch of them! Oh, how she longed to see those tiger lilies
growing! The last time she saw the tiger lilies was the Sunday before
she said good-bye to the blue lilies—she was walking home alone from
Sunday-school in white dress and blue ribbons, and brown kid shoes,
and when she came to the fence corner with the great clump of tiger
lilies, she thought of picking a large bunch of them, but just then
she heard a noise behind her, and turning, saw a neighbor’s three
little black and white pigs; they had followed her all the way from
the corner, and it was so funny to think how she had walked along
unconsciously, with those pigs in single file behind her, that she
just stood and laughed, and then she clapped her hands at them and
chased them back, and forgot all about the tiger lilies.
“Oh, blue lilies, oh, tiger lilies, I’ll _never_ see you growing any
more,” she sighed.
“Why, hello, daughter, you up there?” called the voice below her.
Nettie did not answer; she felt too discouraged to speak, but she
looked down and tried to smile at her father.
Her father looked just as usual, only he had a scythe over his
shoulder.
“I came in a little earlier to cut down your weeds,” he called
cheerily.
Nettie watched him as he swung the scythe, and listened to the swish,
swish, as the tall weeds fell; when the weeds around the well grew
less she caught a glimpse of something blue, and then of something
red; she pulled herself up to the window, and leaned out, and then
she shrieked:—
“Father, don’t cut down the _lilies_!”
There they were, blue lilies and tiger lilies, growing together,
close by the well!
“How did they _get_ there, father?” she called.
“They must have been in the sod that I put around the well last
fall,” he replied; “I remember now that I got it from two different
places. If I had cut down the weeds before the lilies bloomed, I
shouldn’t have known they were there, and should have cut them all
down together.”
Nettie fell back in her chair with a sigh of delight, watching her
father while with his hands he pulled all the weeds away from the
lilies.
“Mother,” she called, lifting herself forward, and resting her chin
again on the window-sill.
“Well, Deary,” came in a quick voice from the shed, and her mother
appeared in the shed doorway with the dish of boiled potatoes she
held in her hand when Nettie’s voice reached her.
“Mother, will you ask Judith to stop and see my lilies the next time
she goes past?”
“Your lilies, child?”
“Yes, my own lilies, there by the well. They came and grew just for
me.”
Mrs. Evans gave a glance toward the well, then hastened to set the
potato dish on the dinner table.
“Of all things! And how she has wanted to see lilies grow! The
blessed child is watched over and done for as her father and I can’t
do. I declare,” in a shame-faced way, all to herself, “when such
things happen I wish I was a Christian.”
“Mother, mother,” called the happy voice again; “I want Joe to see my
lilies too.”
“Yes, Deary,” promised her mother from within the shed.