16 Lily and Water-Lily.

a nook to root in that they might adorn the nakedness
of the vast frontal.

The lily was a strange, shy flower, and could not
bear to live in the eye of all the merry flower world
up on the open hillsides and meadows, and had
begged Mother Earth to let him leave his gay
companions to come down here i in the ‘quiet dell and
watch the stream ripple by.

And as he watched the stream tipple by he watched
something else too. ;

Every morning when the sun had been up an hour
or two and the air was warm and soft, and the hum
of insects mingled with the singing of the birds and
- the rushing of the torrent, there used to come, hand-
in-hand down the rugged path that wound about
the side of the cliff, two of the prettiest little children
that ever were seen,

Their hair was soft and bright and curling, golden
in the sunshine and brown in the shade; their eyes ©
were sweet and loving, and shone like the clear water
of the brook that rippled past at their feet ; their faces