THE SPRING BOUQUET. CHAPTER I. WORK FOR LITTLE HANDS. "There is work in the crowded city, Two little rosy cheeked children, a boy and girl, came trotting home briskly from school one sunny autumn morning. As they neared a neat cottage, with a pretty garden in front, their prattle disturbed the thoughts of a woman who was busy working among her fruit and vegetables. "Oh, Tommy and Bessie, I was just thinking of you, I've been planning something in my head for you to do, and if you both come to tea with me on your way from school this afternoon, I'll tell you what it is." Bessie was all eagerness. Tommy, to whom the mention of work of any kind, was never a happy thought, looked less pleased than his sister at the invitation. "Tell us now, aunt," pleaded Bessie, "and we can come to tea all the same you know." Tommy instantly fell into this arrangement too. He wanted to have his lazy little mind eased on the subject of what his aunt wanted him to do. He hoped very much that it was something which he could hurry over then, and which would in nowise interfere with his enjoyment at his aunt's in the evening. "No, I am not going to tell you now, I have to think more about it myself yet; you must make haste home and have your dinner, and ask your mother to let you come to tea with me; and tell her I will bring you home myself." Off the children trotted, talking about what their aunt could possibly want them to do. "It's a dreadful plague if we've got to begin and work directly we come home from school, whatever it is; and aunt always gives me the hardest work to do." "Because you're so strong, Tommy," said the tantalizing Bessie. "I wish I wasn't strong then." "Oh, Tommy, you wicked boy, you wouldn't like to be always ill like mother, I know I shouldn't; I would like to be strong like aunt, and go up to the big London market every week just as she does, when I am a woman." Saying this, she opened the gate of a less cheerful looking cottage; but it was her home, and after all there is no place like it. To Bessie and Tommy it was the brightest spot they knew, and they entered it with light hearts. The room was clean although not particularly tidy, for the poor mother was an invalid, and could scarcely do anything herself. Her sister, the children's aunt, of whom we have already spoken, came every morning to give |