Welcome to Homeschool Story Time: Week 40.
Sometimes an act of kindness and generosity can have a surprising outcome.
The girl in today’s story, Flora, finds that out.
Keep reading to see what it is that Flora does and how she is rewarded.
Flora’s Looking Glass
by Anna Livingston
On the edge of a thick wood dwelt a little girl whose name was Flora. She was an orphan, and lived with an old woman who got her living by gathering herbs.
Every morning, Flora had to go almost a quarter of a mile to a clear spring in the wood, and fill the kettles with fresh water. She had a sort of yoke, on which the kettles were hung as she carried them.
The pool formed by the spring was so smooth and clear, that Flora could see herself in it; and some one who found her looking in it, one bright morning, called the pool “Flora’s Looking Glass.”
As Flora grew up, some of the neighbors tried to make her leave the old woman, and come and live with them; but Flora said, “No: she has been kind to me when there was no one to care for me, and I will not forsake her now.”
So she kept on in her humble lot; and the old woman taught her the names of all the herbs and wild flowers that grew in the wood; and Flora became quite skillful in the art of selecting herbs, and extracting their essences.
There was one scarce herb that grew on the border of “Flora’s Looking Glass.” It was used in a famous mixture prepared by the old woman; and, when the latter was about to die, she said to Flora, “Here is a recipe for a medicine which will, some day, have a great sale. Take it, and do with it as I have done.”
Flora took the recipe, and the old woman died. But poor Flora was so kind and generous a girl, that she gave the medicine away freely to all the sick people; nor did she try to keep the recipe a secret.
So, though she was not made rich by it, she was made happy; and, as weeks passed on, a man who was a doctor, and had known her father, came to her, and said, “Come and live with me and my wife and daughters, and I will send you to school, and see that you are well taught.”
“But how can I pay you for it all?” asked Flora.
“The recipe will more than pay me,” said the good doctor. “You shall have a share in what I earn from it; and you shall help me make the extract.”
Flora now goes to school in winter; but in midsummer she pays frequent visits to “Flora’s Looking Glass,” and thinks of the kind old lady who taught her so much about herbs and flowers.
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Many blessings,
