deal.  There was less quarreling because conversation with neighbors all about a Blue Flower gave no reason for hard words.  The worst and idlest were curious about it and every one tried experiments of his own.  The children were delighted and actually grew happy and rosy over their digging and watering and care-taking.  Gradually all sorts of curious things happened.  People who were growing Blue Flowers began to keep the ground around about them in order.  They did not like to see bits of paper and rubbish lying about, so they cleared them away.  One quite new thing which occurred was that sometimes people even helped each other a little.  Cripples and those who were weak actually found that there were stronger ones who would do things for them when their backs ached, and it was hard to carry water or dig up weeds.  No one in King Mordreth’s Land had ever helped another before.

The boy who was clever did more than all the rest.  He gathered together all the children he could and formed them into a band using the passwords.  In time it became quite like a little army.  They called themselves The Band of the Blue Flower, and each boy and girl was bound to remember the passwords and apply them to all they did.  So, often, when a number of people were together and things began to go wrong, a clear young voice would cry out somewhere like a silver battle cry: 

“There is no time for anger!” or “There is no time for hate!” or “There is no time to fret!  There is no time.”

Among the great and rich people also singular things came to pass.  Those who had wasted their days loitering or rioting were obliged to get up in the morning to work in their gardens, and finding that exercise and fresh air improved their health and spirits they began to like it.  Court ladies found it good for their complexions and tempers; busy merchants discovered that it made their heads clearer; ambitious students found that after an hour spent evening and morning over their Blue Flower beds they could study twice as long without fatigue.  The children of the princes and nobles became so full of work and talk of their soil and their seeds that they quite forgot to squabble and be jealous of each other’s importance at Court.  Never in one story could it be told how many unusual, interesting, and wonderful things occurred in the once gloomy King Mordreth’s Land just because every person in it, rich and poor, old and young, good and bad, had to plant and care for and live every day of life with a Blue Flower.  Oh! the corners and crannies and queer places it was planted in; and oh! the thrill of excitement everywhere when the first tender green shoots thrust their way through the earth!  And the wave of excitement which passed over the whole land when the first buds showed themselves.  By that time every one was so interested that even the Afraid Ones had forgotten to ask each other what King Amor would do to them if they had no Blue Flower.  Somehow, people had gained courage and they knew the Blue Flower would grow—­and they knew there was no time to stop working while they worried and said “Suppose it didn’t.”  There was no time.