She selected a flower from the bunch, and placed it in her bosom by the side of the other; then bent down until her lips touched it. "You are fond of flowers, my dear." "I love everything that is bright. I like to bury my face in them, like this, and shut my eyes, and think. Such beautiful thoughts come!" Suiting the action to the word, she buried her face in the flowers, and saw pictures of the future as she wished it to be. It was filled with sweet promise, as it nearly always is to youth. And if fulfilment never comes, the dreams bring happiness for the time. "Try!" she said, raising her face and holding out the flowers to him. To please her, he closed his eyes among the leaves. But the visions that came to his inner sense of sight were different from those she had seen. For her the future. For him the past. The clouds through which he looked were dark and sombre; and as glimpses of long-forgotten times flashed through them, he sighed as one might have sighed who, wandering for a generation through a strange country filled with discordant and feverish circumstance, finds himself suddenly in a place where all is hushed, and where the soft breeze brings to him the restful sound of sweet familiar bells. But darker clouds soon rolled over these memories, blotting them out. "Lizzie," he said "suppose you had the chance of living away from the dusty streets in a pretty little house, surrounded by the flowers you love so well!" "How delightful!" she exclaimed, with her face among the flowers again. "Open your eyes, Lizzie, while I speak." "Wait a minute, daddy. Don't speak for sixty seconds. I'm looking at the house." Muzzy remained silent until she spoke again. "I see it," she said, "peeping out among the flowers. It is built of old red brick, the windows are very small, and vines are creeping all over the walls." Thus did her fancy reproduce for her the picture of a country house, which doubtless she had seen at one time or another. Even when she opened her eyes, she saw the vision hanging, as it were in the clouds of a bright memory. "How would you like to live in such a house, Liz?" "How would I like to live in a rainbow?" was her merry rejoinder. "But what I say I mean, my dear." "And what I say I don't--that is, sometimes. Do you really, really mean it though, dad?" "Yes, my dear. The gentleman who was with me to-night--a good friend--has opened out such a prospect to me." "O, I am so glad; for this isn't very nice for you!" she said, glancing round the room. "Nor for you, my dear," he replied, looking wistfully at her. "Don't you wish for something better?" "I wish for a great many things--holidays, new dresses, and new hats--and I should like a good deal of money. If fifty pounds were to tumble down the chimney now, shouldn't we be surprised? Ah, but what's the use of wishing, daddy!"