"Then I must show you another of my _reasons_," she said, with one of her sweet, calm smiles, and opened the door of another very small room, which had no other entrance than through her own. There was a little table in it, and a wooden stool; both were placed near the window. Upon the table lay two books--one was a Bible, the other a large prayer-book, bound in red morocco, and illustrated with prints. A shelf hung in one comer; "Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying," the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Bishop Heber's Hymns," and a few more books besides, were ranged upon it. Among them, a small one, which I was well acquainted with, called "Birds and Flowers," attracted my attention. I asked Alice if she had read it through. "Yes, I have," she replied. "Mr. Henry gave it me a few months ago." I involuntarily started, and looked up into her face, as she said this; but not a shade of embarrassment was to be seen there. She went on to say--"He gave it to me because I was so fond of this poor flower;" and she pointed to a sickly creeping plant, that grew out of a pot, which was placed on the window sill. "You would not know it again now," she continued; "but last summer it was growing against the wall in the little patch of garden we had at Bromley, and a beautiful flower it was." "But what had it to do with this book, more than any other flower, Alice?" "It is a little story, but I will tell it you if you wish it. I sprained my ankle last summer, and could not walk for many weeks. Granny or brother Walter used to drive me in my chair to the open window, to breathe the fresh air, and look at the flowers in our little garden. There was nothing else to look at there--nothing but roofs of houses and black chimneys; but up the wall, and as high as my window, grew this very plant, that looks so dead now, poor thing. Day after day I watched its flowers, though I did not know their names, till I got to see in them things that I thought nobody but me had ever noticed." "What things, Alice?" "Across, a crown of thorns, nails, and a hammer." "The Passion Flower!" "So Mr. Henry told me one day when he found me reading my new kind of book. It was like a book to me, that pretty flower; it made me think of holy things as much as a sermon ever did." "And Henry brought you then this book, because of the poem in it on the Passion Flower?" "He did, and read it to me out loud. It felt strange but pleasant to have one's own thoughts spoken out in such words as those." "And you brought away your Passion Flower with you?" "Yes, but it is dying now; and this gives me thoughts too, which I wish somebody would write about. I should like to hear them read out." I took up her book, and drawing a pencil from my pocket, I rapidly wrote down the following lines:-- "O wish her not to live again, Thy dying passion flower, For better is the calm of death Than life's uneasy hour.