games were played for apple quarters; even the poorest child said, “It is
beautiful in winter!”
And indeed it was beautiful! And the little girl showed everything to the
boy, and the elder-tree continued to breathe forth sweet perfume, while the
red flag with the white cross was streaming in the wind; it was the flag
under which the old sailor had served. The boy became a youth; he was to
go out into the wide world, far away to the countries where the coffee
grows. But at parting the little girl took an elder-blossom from her breast
and gave it to him as a keepsake. He placed it in his prayer-book, and when
he opened it in distant lands it was always at the place where the flower of
remembrance was lying; and the more he looked at it the fresher it became,
so that he could almost smell the fragrance of the woods at home. He
distinctly saw the little girl, with her bright blue eyes, peeping out from
behind the petals, and heard her whispering, “Here it is beautiful in spring,
in summer, in autumn, and in winter,” and hundreds of pictures passed
through his mind.
Thus many years rolled by. He had now become an old man, and was
sitting, with his old wife, under an elder-tree in full bloom. They held each
other by the hand exactly as the great-grandfather and the great-
grandmother had done outside, and, like them, they talked about bygone
days and of their golden wedding. The little girl with the blue eyes and
elder-blossoms in her hair was sitting high up in the tree, and nodded to
them, saying, “To-day is the golden wedding!” And then she took two
flowers out of her wreath and kissed them. They glittered at first like silver,
then like gold, and when she placed them on the heads of the old people
each flower became a golden crown. There they both sat like a king and
queen under the sweet-smelling tree, which looked exactly like an elder-
tree, and he told his wife the story of the elder-tree mother as it had been
told him when he was a little boy. They were both of opinion that the story
contained many points like their own, and these similarities they liked best.
“Yes, so it is,” said the little girl in the tree. “Some call me Little Elder-
tree Mother; others a Dryad; but my real name is ‘Remembrance.’ It is I
