BASKETS OF WILD FLOWERS.

She was sitting by the window, embroidering a pretty trifle of floss-silk and beads, whose colors harmonised richly with her dark brown hair, and almost black eyes, just then half concealed by the droop of her long and curling lashes.

With the restlessness of girlhood, she dropped the work into her lap, and looked out of the window. All at once, her face brightened, and springing to her feet, she leaned over the sill.

A boy was coming up the steps with a basket of flowers in his hand; she heard the distant tinkle of a bell, timidly pulled, and without waiting to be summoned, ran downstairs.

"Ah, it is you, with the flowers. How pretty they are. I never saw anything more lovely."

The boy stood before her as she admired the dainty arrangement of wild flowers, which had cost him so much thought. The dawning pleasure in her eyes sent its sparkling happiness over his face.

"I picked them all myself; father took me into the country on purpose that I might find the prettiest. It was so pleasant. We waded among them with the soft, bright sunshine all around us. Were you ever in the country, lady?"

The boy said this with childlike frankness; but a cold look or word from the beautiful girl would have instantly driven the light from that sensitive face.

Dora buried her face in the flowers, and drew in their pungent odors with a long, delicious breath.

"What a smell of the woods," she said, "how I should like to gather them myself."

"Would you—would you? we are going again this afternoon, and I know father will be so glad to take you with him. Some of them are so tall they sweep over my head. In places the ground is damp, especially where the rushes and cat-tails grow, but there is nothing like it. One would think all the colors in the sky had rained down among the tall grasses. Father loves it almost as much as I do."

Dora smiled at the boy's enthusiasm, and laughed outright when she looked down at her dainty slippers, and thought of wading with them through swamps and crooks of fences, with a man she had never seen, and that handsome boy, in search of wild flowers.

"I think you will have to get them for me—it would be a hard scramble."

"No—no! one is never tired, you find them everywhere."

"Still, you and your father shall gather them for me, as papa desires, I think."

"That will be next best—I will be sure to bring them; would you like more of the blue or white? I found one tuft of pink in a hollow by itself, here it is."

"Don't ask me about it; I never could make anything half so lovely."

The boy smiled, and a glow of delight swept over his face.

"While I was picking them, it seemed to me a little wrong," he said shyly continuing the conversation: "I couldn't feel quite sure that it did not hurt them, when I broke the stems. Rhoda,—she is my own sister—said it was all nonsense, but who knows? One tall golden-rod, as I bent and broke it, seemed to shriek with the pain. I sat down by it and almost cried. Foolish wasn't it? Rhoda says so, and I don't mean to think about it the next time, especially as you are so pleased with the basket: it never seemed so pretty till now."

"You think so?" said Dora, flattered by the admiration that shone in the boy's eyes.

"And no wonder! If I were a flower—"

Dora laughed outright, at the strange conceit.

"Well, if you were a flower, what then?"

"I should feel, as if the sunshine would never leave me."

"What a strange boy you are, I never heard anything like it. Supposing yourself one of these, which would it be."

"The one your lips touched just now. It must be sweetest of all," answered the boy veiling his superb eyes with the dark lashes that fringed them, and shivering with strange thrills of delight under the half startled glance of Dora's eyes.

The girl blushed scarlet. She could feel all the vague poetry in this strange speech, but it troubled her, and might have deepened into offence but for the gentleness and tenderness of the boy.

"We have forgotten one thing," she said, after the blush had swept her face, leaving only a soft rosy shadow behind it. "I have not paid you, we must not forget that."

Luke lifted his eyes with a look of timid reproach.

"Don't, don't," he pleaded. "I cannot do that. Please never mention it again. Rhoda herself says I needn't do it for money."

"But you have spent time, and had ever so much trouble in getting them."

"Oh that was my happiness; please let me keep it."

"But we must reward you some way."

"If you only would!" faltered the boy, looking through the open door of a superb room, in which a grand piano stood open. "Give me music for my flowers."

"That I will, strange boy. It will be pleasant to have a listener. Come in here, since you will take nothing else."

Dora Foster had been well taught, and her love of music was a passion. She took her seat at the piano and dashed her hand over the keys in a bold prelude, thinking to charm the uncultivated ear of this strange child with the stirring passages of a march. Turning to look upon his face after the first brilliant, essay, she saw that it was clouded, and wondered at it.

"Is music sweet to you as the flowers?" she inquired.

"Oh sweeter, sweeter, a thousand times!" he said. "I think it must be the music of the winds and the whispering of water as it runs, which fills the flowers with such bright life. I hated to bring them away, for it seemed to me that those left behind stooped downward to listen, with fear that I had come to take the others. It was all fancy, as Rhoda said, but I suppose one cannot help fancies, they come upon one so."

"You love music, I can see that by your face," said Dora, a little crest-fallen that astonishment and admiration had not followed her efforts to amuse him. "Perhaps you have some one at home who plays?"

"Oh yes, my father is first violin at the theatre."

"Oh, indeed! that accounts for your going there; has he ever taught you?"

"Yes, I think he loves to teach me better than anything on earth."

"How strange, I should so like to hear you play; but we have no violin here, nothing but the harp and piano."

"I never touched a harp, but——"

"You can play the piano a little, is that it?"

"My father knows all the music dealers, and most of them like to have me play on their instruments," answered the boy modestly, "but I like the violin best."

Dora got up from her seat.

"Will you let me hear you?" she said, kindly; for so far as music was concerned, she felt safe in patronizing the lad.

Luke took his place on the stool, and began to turn over some sheets of music in a way that fairly took Dora's breath; for he was searching among her most difficult pieces. Having satisfied himself, the lad dropped his delicate hands to the keys, with a touch that brought their first music out like a gush of air in the woods. With that bright face bending toward him in its great astonishment, he was timid and hesitating; but after a few moments the spirit within him asserted itself and that lofty room resounded with such music as no man ever taught, and nothing but genius itself could have learned. There was no method in the boy; the very smile upon his lips breathed music, his eyes danced or saddened as the strain of his own creation grew fainter, or triumphant. Every line of his face and nerve of his body, changed and vibrated to the power of his own harmonies. After the first effort, he abandoned his notes, and gave himself up to the inspiration of a slow plaintive melody, which grew and thrilled under those childlike hands into something so sweet and wild, that it seemed scarcely an expression of mortal feeling.

Dora saw that the child was indeed inspired, and gazed upon him in silent wonder, for the beauty of his face grew heavenly and spiritual as the strains he created.

Rhoda, in the pride of her girlish motherhood, had insisted that her idol should wear a tunic of soft brown cloth and snow white under garments, that gave a picturesque effect to the slender form and perfect head. His hair, so bright and richly golden, glanced and rippled in the light as the heavenly face it shaded bent and swayed to the motion of his hands. Murillo never painted anything more beautiful than that boy in the hour of his love's first inspiration.

All at once the music ceased, and Luke came out of his dream. Startled and penitent for what he had done, he left the piano and taking up his cap, stood like a culprit before the girl his genius had charmed.

"Please forgive me; I forgot."

"Forgive you! one might as well attempt to forgive the angels!" cried Dora, taking his beautiful head between her hands, and gazing into his face in an ecstacy of delight. The boy drew back from the touch of her hands, flushing crimson; his eyes sank, his head drooped, like a flower on its stalk when an August sun is at its noon. She could not understand the meaning of this change. Was it the exhaustion of genius overtaxing a most delicate organism, or had her enthusiasm shocked the boy?

"I will go home now, if you please," he said, in a sweet faint voice.

"But tell me first, what it is—where can I get the piece you have been playing?" said Dora, detaining him.

"Ask the flowers; it was their complaint. I knew that they suffered when my hand broke them down; but I brought them to you, and that is like giving things that must die up to the angels."

Luke bent his eyes to the floor as he spoke, and with sweet humility, stole out of the room.

Dora went up-stairs into a chamber where her mother was sitting.

"Who was it, Dora? I heard the music and knew that it could not be yours."

"Mamma, I do not know whether it was the boy of whom we bought flowers at the theatre, or the spirit of some child long since in Heaven. See what he has brought me, and the others scarcely faded; let me take them to my room."