And again, almost in the same spot, there sprung up a _Heart's Ease_, so bright and glowing that it seemed the very offspring of Joy. At first our Fairy would not trust herself to love it. She remembered that Winter would come again, and she thought, too, the new flower wanted the loveliness of her Lily. But invariably her heart smiled beneath its influence, and there was Springtime once more in her soul. The recollection of Winter passed from her mind, as the ice before the sun. But again Summer ripened into Autumn, and that, in its turn, was changed into Winter, and again the little Fairy was left alone. She beheld one morning her bright little gem of a flower set in the brilliants of frost, and sparkling as gaily as if the light still came from within. She hastened to dissolve with her breath the diamond fetters of her favorite, but alas! their weight had been too heavy for the little creature, and it fell with them to rise no more. The Fairy wept--but not so bitterly as erewhile. She knew the Spring would come again with fresh flowers; and when it _did_ come she beheld a sweet _Mignonette_ spring up on her threshold, but so different in beauty from her former favorites that she turned from it in disappointment. Yet when the humble flower filled her grotto with fragrance, and insensibly its {78} sweetness stole into her heart, and possessed it with a delightful tranquillity she had never experienced before, her soul fainted within her when she remembered that Winter would snatch away from her _this_ loved one as it had done her _other_ loved ones before. And in truth, but a few brief months, and the blast had swept over this fragile flower, leaving no trace of its existence but the perfume it exhaled with its last breath, on the gale that bore it into eternity. Now it was that our poor little Fairy felt a dreariness, not to be shaken off, fall heavily upon her spirits. She wished no longer for Spring. She wished never again to fix her heart upon the perishing flowers of Earth. The shadow of mortality seemed to have fallen even upon her bright little grotto, and she sighed for another home.