Chapter VI: The Flower of Hope

ALL is bare in the garden! The wind blows round in gusts; the snow lies thick wherever the wind has not lifted it; the cold seems to have taken possession.

Daisy looked out of the window on a dull February afternoon. The weather outside matched the chilled little heart. An arm came round her shoulders, and a gentle voice said, "Well, little one, what is that head of yours so busy over?"

"Oh, I don't know, Auntie! I was looking at the snow, and thinking—somehow—the winter seems never-ending!" There was great sadness in the young voice.

"Yes—you have had a hard time of it, Daisy," said her aunt, lovingly.

"And it is not only that mother is gone," said the girl, with a choke, "and that all the rooms are empty—it is not only that—"

She paused, unable to proceed.

"I see all that," whispered her aunt, "but I know well that it is not always the sorrows people can see that are the hardest."

Daisy looked up quickly, as if that were a ray of comfort.

"Jesus sees," proceeded her aunt, "what we can hardly explain to any one else, He understands."

Daisy squeezed her hand, and then, as if impelled to go on, she added, "I thought as I looked out on the wintry garden, as if my heart were something like that, and I don't see any help for it!"

"Still, Daisy, beneath the snow and the frost, the plants are alive! That is how the life of Christ is in your heart. Put on your shawl, and I will get mine. There is nothing like seeing—"

Daisy ran with alacrity. Hope had begun to dawn in her heart.

Her aunt led the way to a sheltered corner.

"Look!" she exclaimed. There, beneath a holly bush, peeped out of the white earth a little patch of exquisite snowdrops!

"Oh! Auntie!" said Daisy, and her eyes were full of tears, she did not know why.

"Didn't I tell you the life was there?" whispered her aunt. "Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God!"

When her father came home that night, there was a different atmosphere somehow in the quiet room, and about his little girl. There was nothing that he could say was altered, except that a bunch of snowdrops stood in a vase beside his plate; but Daisy's eyes had the light of hope in them.

"The child has been talking to Jesus, I fancy," said his sister that night, "and any one who talks to Him finds the worst burden lifted!"