"Well, then suppose," said grandmother, "that as you helped, you found out something else: that in each of you, say, where your heart is, or where your breath is, there was a flower trying to blossom through! And that only as you help the earth flower to blossom could your flower blossom. And that your doing one way would make your flower droop its head and grow dark and shrivel up. But your doing the other way would make it grow, and turn beautiful colors--so that, bye and bye, every one of your bodies would be just a sheath for this flower. Which way then would you rather do?" "Oh, make it grow, make it grow," we said again. And Mary Elizabeth added longingly: "Wouldn't it be fun if it was true?" "It is true," said Grandmother Beers. She sat there, softly smiling over her pink sweet-peas. We looked at her silently. Then I remembered that her face had always seemed to me to be somehow light within. May be it was her flower showing through! "Grandmother!" I cried, "is it true--is it true?" "It is true," she repeated. "And whether the earth flower and other people's flowers and your flower are to bloom or not is what living is about. And everything makes a difference. Isn't that a good reason for not being wicked?" We all looked up in her face, something in us leaping and answering to what she said. And I know that we understood. "Oh," Mary Elizabeth whispered presently to Betty, "hurry home and tell Margaret Amelia. It'll make it so much easier when she comes out to her supper." That night, on the porch, alone with Mother and Father, I inquired into something that still was not clear. "But how can you tell which things are wicked? And which ones are wrong and which things are right?" Father put out his hand and touched my hand. He was looking at me with a look that I knew--and his smile for me is like no other smile that I have ever known. "Something will tell you," he said, "always." "Always?" I doubted. "Always," he said. "There will be other voices. But if you listen, something will tell you always. And it is all you need." I looked at Mother. And by her nod and her quiet look I perceived that all this had been known about for a long time. "That is why Grandma Bard is coming to live with us," she said, "not just because we wanted her, but because--that said so." In us all a flower--and something saying something! And the earth flower trying to blossom ... I looked down the street: at Mr. Branchett walking in his garden, at the light shining from windows, at the folk sauntering on the sidewalk, and toward town where the band was playing. We all knew about this together then. This was why everything was! And there were years and years to make it come through. What if I, alone among them all, had never found out. THE HOLY PLACE