The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

138 The Gates Ajar.
and little brooks, and fountains of just the
right sort; the fountains of this world don't
please me generally. I want a little brook to
sit and sing to Faith by. 0, I forgot! she will
be a large girl probably, won't she? "
" Never too large to like to hear your mother
sing, will you, Faith? "
"0 no," said Faith, who bobbed in and out
again like a canary, just then,-" not unless
I'm dreadful big, with long dresses and a waterfall, you know. I s'pose, maybe, I'd have
to have little girls myself to sing to, then.
I hope they'11 behave better'n Mary Ann does.
She's lost her other arm, and all her sawdust
is just running out. Besides, Kitty thought
she was a mouse, and ran down cellar with
her, and she's all shooken up, somehow. She
don't look very pretty."
" Flowers, too," her mother went on, after the
interruption. "Not all amaranth and asphodel,
but of variety and color and beauty unimagined; glorified lilies of the valley, heavenly
tea-rose buds, and spiritual harebells among
them. 0, how your poor mother used to say,
-you know flowers were her poetry, - coming in weak and worn from her garden in the
early part of her sickness, hands and lap and