After the rites of hospitality had been duly observed, the old dame seated herself contentedly in her door with her distaff, resigned Agnes to the safe guardianship of her uncle, and had a feeling of security in seeing them sitting together on the parapet of the garden, with the portfolio spread out between them,—­the warm twilight glow of the evening sky lighting up their figures as they bent in ardent interest over its contents.  The portfolio showed a fluttering collection of sketches,—­fruits, flowers, animals, insects, faces, figures, shrines, buildings, trees,—­all, in short, that might strike the mind of a man to whose eye nothing on the face of the earth is without beauty and significance.

“Oh, how beautiful!” said the girl, taking up one sketch, in which a bunch of rosy cyclamen was painted riding out of a bed of moss.

“Ah, that indeed, my dear!” said the artist, “Would you had seen the place where I painted it!  I stopped there to recite my prayers one morning; ’t was by the side of a beautiful cascade, and all the ground was covered with these lovely cyclamens, and the air was musky with their fragrance.—­Ah, the bright rose-colored leaves!  I can get no color like them, unless some angel would bring me some from those sunset clouds yonder.”

“And oh, dear uncle, what lovely primroses!” pursued Agnes, taking up another paper.

“Yes, child; but you should have seen them when I was coming down the south side of the Apennines;—­these were everywhere so pale and sweet, they seemed like the humility of our Most Blessed Mother in her lowly mortal state.  I am minded to make a border of primroses to the leaf in the Breviary where is the ’Hail, Mary!’—­for it seems as if that flower doth ever say, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord!’”

“And what will you do with the cyclamen, uncle? does not that mean something?”

“Yes, daughter,” replied the monk, readily entering into that symbolical strain which permeated all the heart and mind of the religious of his day,—­“I can see a meaning in it.  For you see that the cyclamen puts forth its leaves in early spring deeply engraven with mystical characters, and loves cool shadows, and moist, dark places, but comes at length to wear a royal crown of crimson; and it seems to me like the saints who dwell in convents and other prayerful places, and have the word of God graven in their hearts in youth, till these blossom into fervent love, and they are crowned with royal graces.”

“Ah!” sighed Agnes, “how beautiful and how blessed to be among such!”

“Thou sayest well, dear child.  Blessed are the flowers of God that grow in cool solitudes, and have never been profaned by the hot sun and dust of this world!”

“I should like to be such a one,” said Agnes.  “I often think, when I visit the sisters at the Convent, that I long to be one of them.”

“A pretty story!” said Dame Elsie, who had heard the last words,—­“go into a convent and leave your poor grandmother all alone, when she has toiled night and day for so many years to get a dowry for you and find you a worthy husband!”