As Hazel saw Miss Fletcher coming, she gazed at the unsmiling face looking out from hair drawn back in a tight knot; and Miss Fletcher, on her part, saw such winning eagerness in the smile that met her, that she modified the sharp reproof ready to spring forth.

“Get down off the fence, little girl,” she said.  “You oughtn’t ever to hang by the pickets; you’ll break one if you do.”

“Oh, yes,” returned Hazel, getting down quickly.  “I didn’t think of that.  I wanted so much to see if that lily-bud had opened, that looked as if it was going to, yesterday; and it has.”

“Which one?” asked Miss Fletcher, looking around.

“Right there behind that second rosebush,” replied Hazel, holding Ella tight with one arm while she pointed eagerly.

“Oh, yes.”  Miss Fletcher went over to the plant.

“I think it is the loveliest of all,” went on the little girl.  “It makes me think of the quest flower.”

“What’s that?” Miss Fletcher looked at the strange child curiously.  “I never heard of it.”

“It’s the perfect flower,” returned Hazel.

“Where did you ever see it?”

“I never did, but I read about it.”

“Where is it to be bought?” Miss Fletcher was really interested now, because flowers were her hobby.

“In the story it says at the Public Garden; but I’ve been to the Public Garden in Boston, and I never saw any I thought were as beautiful as yours.”

Hazel was not trying to win Miss Fletcher’s heart, but she had found the road to it.

The care-lined face regarded her more closely than ever.  “I don’t remember you.  I thought I knew all the children around here.”

“No ’m.  I’m a visitor.  I live in Boston; and we have a flat and of course there isn’t any yard, and I think your garden is perfectly beautiful.  I come to see it every day, and it’s fun to stand out here and count the smells.”

Miss Fletcher’s face broke into a smile.  It did really seem as if it cracked, because her lips had been set in such a tight line.  “It ain’t very often children like flowers unless they can pick them,” she replied.  “I can’t sleep nights sometimes, wishing my garden wasn’t so near the fence.”

The little girl smiled and pointed to a climbing rose that had strayed from its trellis, and one pink flower that was poking its pretty little face between the pickets.  “See that one,” she said.  “I think it wanted to look up and down the street, don’t you?”

“And you didn’t gather it,” returned Miss Fletcher, looking at Hazel approvingly.  “Well, now, for anybody fond of flowers as you are, I think that was real heroic.”

“She belongs to nice folks,” she decided mentally.

“Oh, it was a tame flower,” returned the child, “and that would have been error.  If it had been a wild one I would have picked it.”

“Error, eh?” returned Miss Fletcher, and again her thin lips parted in a smile.  “Well, I wish everybody felt that way.”