The mother was quite startled, and wondered what had given the child this idea. Janie explained it afterwards, when a considerable amount of brain-searching had been done. It took a wooden horse on wheels, a box of chocolate and a box of bricks to get the little fellow to dry his tears. The next Christmas, strange to say, there was the same expectation and the same disappointment, but with added sorrow. The child was older, and if it could appreciate good things more, also felt sorrow more. He had mingled with other children, whose fathers made much of them. "Perhaps daddy will come at Christmas," he would say to himself. Christmas morning came, but again no daddy. "Why doesn't daddy come?" he sobbed out on his mother's breast. "I don't know, darling." "Has he forgotten me?" he asked, turning up his tear-stained face to hers. "I do not know." The words had to be uttered. There was no way in which she could truthfully cover up the silence of years. To the sensitive child the words were like a cruel blow; after building upon the father's return to be told that father might have forgotten him was more than he could bear, and in his grief, to his little mind, the doubt became a certainty--his father had forgotten him! It was the child-soul's first knowledge of Gethsemane. The mother strained him passionately to her, showering both tears and kisses upon the little tear-stained face. "But mummy has not forgotten! Mummy never will forget!" she wailed over him. From that hour a new feeling took possession of little Jack. If his father had forgotten him, it was very likely the mother was also forgotten. Mummy must feel lonely too, but he would not forget her, and when he was a man he would work for her. He would be her champion and defender--not that he used these words to himself, they were rather too long for him, but the idea they expressed was in his brave, loyal little heart. Nanna often wondered at the quaint little ways in which he showed himself his mother's protector, but never knew the heart-sorrow which had given birth to them. The child's grief was an added weight to the mother's heart. She saw that her burden was no longer one which she had to bear alone, but that her child, her innocent, sunny-haired child, with the face of an angel, and brother to an angel, had to feel some of its weight also. * * * * * Away in Holland a gardener will patiently labour for even twenty years to bring one hyacinth to perfection. Its soil is often changed, and the hand, though moved by a heart which dearly loves the flower, does not hesitate to even use the knife to the sensitive root. With still greater patience bends the Great Gardener over the flowers of the Kingdom.