"I'll keep fresh as long as ever I can," said the pansy, "It's the
least I can do for him, poor fellow!"
"At all events the flowers are all out of my own garden," said Bethea,
sitting down by the white bed, and then she talked away so gently that
the boy's weary face smoothed out, and he went to sleep.
In a few days' time Bethea begged her grandmother to let her go again
to the hospital, and she persuaded the gardener to give her a
beautiful bunch of pansies to take to the sick boy.
As she entered the room, she saw that the little purple pansy was
standing in a tumbler of water, on a chair by the boy's bed.
Its head hung over on one side, but it looked quite fresh and healthy.
"Hasn't it lasted well?" said the boy, happily. He looked much better
and spoke in a loud, cheerful voice. "It's been talking to me about
all sorts of things! the country, and gardens, and springtime, and
being out and about in the fresh air and sunshine!"
"Well, I certainly have tried to make myself as pleasant as possible,"
said the pansy, but it spoke so low that nobody heard it except the
boy whose ears were sharpened by illness.
"I've brought you some more," said Bethea, holding out her bouquet,
"shall I put them in the tumbler with the little one?"
"Oh, no!" cried the boy anxiously, "I think if you don't mind I'd
rather you gave those to some of the other children. I can't like any
fine new flowers as well as that little fellow. I feel as if he had
made me well again!"
The pansy expanded with pride, and a tear of gratitude rolled out of
its eye, and fell with a splash on the cane chair-seat.
"I'm going to have it dried in my old pocket book, when it's really
withered," continued the boy, "and then I shall be able to look at it
always."
When little Bethea next visited the hospital, the boy with the crooked
leg was just leaving; but his leg was not crooked any longer; his face
was bright and healthy, and safely buttoned up in his coat he carried
a shabby old pocket book, in which lay a withered flower, with one
word written underneath in large pencilled letters--"_Heartsease_."
