In the plants of Mrs. Buzzell’s sitting-room, in her garden, and in the woods behind her house, there was ample means for botanizing, though at first it was a hard task for Susie to study. The mental effort required to distinguish the monocotyledonous and the dicotyledonous in the specimens she and Clara gathered, seemed a mockery to her over-burdened soul; but the struggle paid well. In a few weeks she became deeply interested in all her studies, and her rapid progress astonished her little circle of friends. Meanwhile, she carefully tended Mrs. Buzzell’s plants, which after a time began to respond to the knowledge she had acquired of their nature and different wants, and day by day she took some new responsibility of household cares from Mrs. Buzzell, who, after a month, could not have been induced to part with Susie. She took the whole charge of the wardrobe of the coming waif, and the hard lines about her mouth softened with the new, strange pleasure in the work that awakened memories of nearly forty years before, when, as a young wife, she had once, with loving care, prepared numerous tiny articles for a baby that never wore them. They had lain ever since, packed away in camphor, and no one had ever known the secret but her husband, now dead many years. Many times she had been tempted to give them to this or that friend, but her generosity could not quite overcome a sense of shame that women always experience over a useless work of this kind; yet she dreaded to have them found after her death, and there was a soft spot somewhere in her old heart, that would not let her destroy them. One day, therefore, with many misgivings, she unpacked with Susie the antique, camphor-scented trunk, and told the little history of her early married years, delighted only that Susie did not laugh at her. The idea of the serious little Susie laughing at any human disappointment, was simply absurd. She only said: “It was too bad, when you were married to one you loved, and the baby would have been so welcome.” “Well,” said Mrs. Buzzell, kindly, “we’ll make this baby welcome in spite of everything. We can’t understand all God’s ways; and who knows but this may be a trial that will lead you nearer to Him who judges hearts not as men judge, but as one who made them, and knows all their secret springs?” This little experience, which to Mrs. Buzzell seemed a most important confidence, tended to develop all the dormant softness and tenderness of her nature; and one day the little, old baby-wardrobe was brought down, and her own wrinkled hands washed out the odor of camphor and the yellow of forty years. * * * * *