everywhere, the grass clustered thickest and greenest where she went, the
winds caressed her gently as they passed, and the birds loved to perch
near her window and sing their prettiest songs. Margaret loved them
all,--the sunlight, the singing winds, the grass, the carolling birds. She
communed with them; their wisdom inspired her life, and this wisdom gave
her nature a rare beauty.

Every pleasant day Margaret was wheeled from her home in the city down to
the beach, and there for hours she would sit, looking out, far out upon
the ocean, as if she were communing with the ocean spirits that lifted up
their white arms from the restless waters and beckoned her to come.
Oftentimes the children playing on the beach came where Margaret sat, and
heard her tell little stories of the pebbles and the shells, of the ships
away out at sea, of the ever-speeding gulls, of the grass, of the flowers,
and of the other beautiful things of life; and so in time the children
came to love Margaret. Among those who so often gathered to hear the
gentle sick girl tell her pretty stories was a youth of Margaret's
age,--older than the others, a youth with sturdy frame and a face full of
candor and earnestness. His name was Edward, and he was a student in the
city; he hoped to become a great scholar sometime, and he toiled very
zealously to that end. The patience, the gentleness, the sweet simplicity,
the fortitude of the sick girl charmed him. He found in her little stories
a quaint and beautiful philosophy he never yet had found in books; there
was a valor in her life he never yet had read of in the histories. So,
every day she came and sat upon the beach, Edward came too; and with the
children he heard Margaret's stories of the sea, the air, the grass, the
birds, and the flowers.

From her moist eyry in the surf the old gum boot descried the group upon
the beach each pleasant day. Now the old gum boot had seen enough of the