But she did not begin to gather the daisies as Miriam was doing. She lay down in the grass just as Chaucer tells us he used to do in the mornings of May for the same purpose--to look at the daisy--"leaning on my elbow and my side"; and thus she continued for some time. Then she rose and came slowly back to Lucy. "I can't tell what they mean," she said. "I have been trying very hard, too." "I don't know whether I understand them or not, myself. But I fancy we get some good from what God shows us even when we don't understand it much." "They are such little things!" said Mattie. "I can hardly fancy them worth making." "God thinks them worth making, though, or he would not make them. He wouldn't do anything that he did not care about doing. There's the lark again. Listen to him, how glad he is. He is so happy that he can't bear it without singing. If he couldn't sing it would break his heart, I fancy. Do you think God would have made his heart so glad if he did not care for his gladness, or given him such a song to sing--for he must have made the song and taught it to the lark--the song is just the lark's heart coming out in sounds--would he have made all the lark if he did not care for it? And he would not have made the daisies so pretty if their prettiness was not worth something in his eyes. And if God cares for them, surely it is worth our while to care for them too." Mattie listened very earnestly, went back to the daisies, and lay down again beside a group of them. Miriam kept running about from one spot to another, gathering them. What Mattie said, or what Miriam replied, I do not know, but in a little while Mattie came to Lucy with a red face--a rare show in her. "I don't like Miss Miriam," she said. "She's not nice at all." "Why, what's the matter?" asked Lucy, in some surprise, for the children had got on very well together as yet. "What has she been doing?" "She doesn't care a bit for Somebody. I don't like her." "But Somebody likes her." To this Mattie returned no answer, but stood thoughtful. The blood withdrew from her face to its fountain, and she went back to the daisies once more. The following day she began to gather flowers as other children do, even to search for them as for hidden treasures. And if she did not learn their meaning with her understanding, she must have learned it with her heart, for she would gaze at some of them in a way that showed plainly enough that she felt their beauty; and in the beauty, the individual loveliness of such things, lies the dim lesson with which they faintly tincture our being. No man can be quite the same he was after having _loved_ a new flower.