could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed
as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves and all,
with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my little woman--a
present from the outside world which she loved so much. And as I went there
dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror in which, if I could
find it, she would see it still more lovely than in a direct looking at
itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay in fragments in the drawers
and cabinets of my memory. And before I got home I had found all the pieces
and put them together; and then it was a lovely little sonnet which a
friend of mine had written and allowed me to see many years before. I was
in the way of writing verses myself; but I should have been proud to have
written this one. I never could have done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it
had never seen the light through the windows of print. It was with some
difficulty that I got it all right; but I thought I had succeeded very
nearly, if not absolutely, and I said it over and over, till I was sure I
should not spoil its music or its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.

"Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you," I said.

She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her two
hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said what I
have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to her. Here
it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend had found