stories for children, has another; and two orphan sisters who keep
school have another; and Miss Craydocke calls her house the Beehive,
and buzzes up and down in it, and out and in, on little "seeing-to"
errands of care and kindness all day long, as never any queen-bee
did in any beehive before, but in a way that makes her more truly
queen than any sitting in the middle cell of state to be fed on
royal jelly. Behind the Beehive, is a garden, as there should be;
great patches of lily-of-the valley grow there that Miss Craydocke
ties up bunches from in the spring and gives away to little
children, and carries into all the sick rooms she knows of, and the
poor places. I always think of those lilies of the valley when I
think of Miss Craydocke. It seems somehow as if they were blooming
about her all the year through; and so they are, perhaps, invisibly.
The other flowers come in their season; the crocuses have been done
with first of all; the gay tulips and the snowballs have made the
children glad when they stopped at the gate and got them, going to
school. Miss Craydocke is always out in her garden at school-time.
By and by there are the tall white lilies, standing cool and serene
in the July heats; then Miss Craydocke is away at the mountains,
pressing ferns and drying grasses for winter parlors; but there is
somebody on duty at the garden dispensary always, and there are
flower-pensioners who know they may come in and take the gracious
toll.

Late in the autumn, the nasturtiums and verbenas and marigolds are
bright; and the asters quill themselves into the biggest globes they
can, of white and purple and rose, as if it were to make the last
glory the best, and to do the very utmost of the year. Then the
chrysanthemums go into the house and bloom there for Christmas-time.