So Eline hid in her heart the things she knew and the things she would
have told, as she had hidden in her soul at the river of forgetfulness
the memory of the king's garden of delight. And she took her way into
the world with messages of love and of hope, such simple messages as the
children understood, better sometimes than their elders. She told the
children many beautiful fairy stories and they listened eagerly. They
did not know that these were the stories which she had told to the
learned ones of the earth and which were really true, though they had
not believed.
The children listened, and they said: "It is beautiful. Some day we will
seek out such a beautiful world as that of which the stories tell."
[Illustration: SHE TOLD THE CHILDREN STORIES]
There were houses, too, which they built--little toy houses with toy
bricks. But Eline showed them how to shape the bricks and how to make
each brick fit in its proper place so that never a one should lose its
worth. And Eline showed the children how that behind the building of
beautiful mansions there was the beautiful thought that made the masonry
so noble a work, though it were only toy masonry. And the children
understood.
In their games they had done each his best and they did well. But Eline
showed them games in which they all acted together, even the little ones
helping and sharing. It was wonderful to them that they had not thought
of this before, because now they found that they could do more than ever
they had done when each worked alone and for himself.
Near the city where they dwelt was a vast plain full of great boulders,
which they could have made into a great park and a beautiful garden; but
the people of the city cared not for such things and would not help
them. By themselves they knew not how to move the rocks. So it remained
a waste of wild growth, except in those places where the children had
moved one by one, and with great difficulty, the smaller stones.
Now Eline bid them take a strong rope. "For," said she, "we will clear
that plain, and it shall be for a dwelling and a garden for all." She
was thinking of the king's garden.
The children looked at her in astonishment as though they wondered if
she meant the thing she said.
"We have no rope," they said, "and none will give us any."
"There is your rope," said Eline, pointing out the overgrown plain,
where, amid the rocks in the great patches from which they had slowly
and painfully drawn the smaller stones, grew masses of pale blue
flowers, beautiful, delicate little blossoms, like wind-flowers.
Again the children looked at her, questioningly; not as the people at
first had done, but trustingly, though they knew not what she would have
them do, but sought to learn her wishes.
[Illustration]
So at her bidding they gathered all the ripened stalks of the little
flowers and laid them out in the sun as she directed.
Almost it seemed a pity to destroy the plants. One little worker asked
Eline of this matter for he loved the flowers and was sorry to see them
gathered and dried.
"Does it not hurt the flowers to pluck them?" he asked. "Some say that
you can talk with them as with all living things, and you can tell if
the flowers do not suffer in the gathering, although they are old and
ripe."
His was a loving heart and Eline saw that he asked this out of no mere
curiosity. Gently she touched his forehead with her finger.
"Look!" she said. "Look and listen, for I have opened the seeing eye to
you."