“Side by side were their cradles, one beyond another in beautiful straight rows; and as the pollen-grains grew daily larger, the cradles also grew for their accommodation, until at last they felt themselves really full of sweet, delicious life; and those who lived at the tops of the rows peeped out from the opening of the dry leaves which wrapped them all together, and saw a little boy with his father coming through the cornfield, while yet every thing was beaded with dew, and the sun was scarcely an hour high.  The boy carried a basket; and the father broke from the corn-stalks the full, firm ears of sweet corn, and heaped the basket full.”

“O mother,” cried Willie, “that was father and I!  Don’t you remember how we used to go out last summer every morning before breakfast to bring in the corn?  And we must have taken that very ear; for I remember how the full kernels lay in straight rows, side by side, just as you have told.”

Now Alice is breaking her threads of silk, and trying to see the tiny opening of the tube; and Annie thinks she will look for the pollen-grains the very next time she goes to the cornfield.

WATER-LILIES

The stream that crept down from the hills, three miles away, has worn a smooth bed for itself in the gravel; has watered the farmer’s fields, and turned the wheel of the old grist-mill, where the miller tends the stones that grind the farmer’s corn.  But down below here the stream has something else to do.  It has been working hard, up and away from dam to dam again; and as always in life there should be something besides business,—­something beautiful and peaceful,—­so the stream has swept round this corner, behind the wooded point of land which hides the mill, and spread itself out in the hollow of Brown’s meadow, where farmer Brown says his grandfather used to tell him some Indian wigwams stood when he was a boy.  The land has sunk since then, and there is something more beautiful than Indian wigwams there now.

Where the old squaws used to sit weaving baskets, and the papooses rolled and played, is now thick, black mud, in which are great tangled roots, some of them bigger than my arm.

All winter they lie there under the ice, while the children skate over them.  In the spring, when every thing stirs with new life, they, too, must wake up:  so, slowly and steadily, they begin to put up long stems to reach the surface of the water.  Chambered stems they are, each having four passages leading up to the air, and down to the root and black mud.  The walls of these chambers are brown and slimy, and each stem bears at its top a slimy bud,—­slimy on the outside, brownish-green as it pushes up through the water; for this outer coat is stout and waterproof, and can well afford to be unpretending, since it carries something very precious wrapped up inside.

Not days, but weeks,—­even months, it is working upon this hidden treasure before we shall see it.  And the July mornings have come while we wait.