Fanny, the Flower-Girl; or, Honesty Rewarded. To Which are Added Other Tales

Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Franks,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version
by Al Haines.










FANNY, THE FLOWER-GIRL;

OR, HONESTY REWARDED.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED OTHER TALES.


BY SELINA BUNBURY.





FANNY, THE FLOWER-GIRL


"Come, buy my flowers; flowers fresh and fair. Come, buy my flowers.
Please ma'am, buy a nice bunch of flowers, very pretty ones, ma'am.
Please, sir, to have some flowers; nice, fresh ones, miss; only just
gathered; please look."

Thus spoke, or sometimes sung, a little girl of perhaps eight years
old, holding in her hand a neat small basket, on the top of which lay a
clean white cloth, to shade from the sun the flowers which she praised
so highly, and a little bunch of which she presented to almost every
passer-by, in the hope of finding purchasers; while, after one had
passed rudely on, another had looked at her young face and smiled,
another had said, "What a nice child!" but not one had taken the
flowers, and left the penny or the half-penny that was to pay for them
the little girl, as if accustomed to all this, only arranged again the
pretty nosegays that had been disarranged in the vain hope of selling
them, and commenced anew in her pretty singing tone, "Come, buy my
flowers; flowers fresh and fair."

"Your flowers are sadly withered, my little maid," said a kind,
country-looking gentleman, who was buying some vegetables at a stall
near her.

"Oh, sir! I have fresh ones, here, sir; please look;" and the child
lifted up the cover of her basket, and drew from the very bottom a
bunch of blossoms on which the dew of morning still rested.

"Please to see, sir; a pretty rose, sir, and these pinks and
mignonette, and a bunch of jessamine, sir, and all for one penny."

"Bless thee! pretty dear!" said the old lame vegetable-seller, "thou'lt
make a good market-woman one of these days. Your honor would do well to
buy her flowers, sir, she has got no mother or father, God help her,
and works for a sick grandmother."

"Poor child!" said the old gentleman. "Here, then, little one, give me
three nice nosegays, and there is sixpence for you."

With delight sparkling in every feature of her face, and her color
changed to crimson with joy, the little flower-girl received in one
hand the unusual piece of money; and setting her basket on the ground,
began hastily and tremblingly to pick out nearly half its contents as
the price of the sixpence; but the gentleman stooped down, and taking
up at random three bunches of the flowers, which were not the freshest,
said,

"Here, these will do; keep the rest for a more difficult customer. Be a
good child; pray to God, and serve Him, and you will find He is the
Father of the fatherless."

And so he went away; and the flower-girl, without waiting to put her
basket in order, turned to the old vegetable-seller, and cried,
"Sixpence! a whole sixpence, and all at once. What will grandmother say
now? See!" and opening her hand, she displayed its shining before her
neighbor's eyes.

"Eh!" exclaimed the old man, as he approached his eyes nearer to it.
"Eh! what is this? why thou hast twenty sixpences there; this is a
half-sovereign!"

"Twenty sixpences! why the gentleman said, there is sixpence for thee,"
said the child.

"Because he didn't know his mistake," replied the other; "I saw him
take the piece out of his waistcoat-pocket without looking."

"Oh dear! what shall I do?" cried the little girl.

"Why, thou must keep it, to be sure," replied the old man; "give it to
thy grandmother, she will know what to do with it, I warrant thee."

"But I must first try to find the good gentleman, and tell him of his
mistake," said the child. "I know what grandmother would say else; and
he cannot be far off, I think, because he was so fat; he will go slow,
I am sure, this hot morning. Here, Mr. Williams, take care of my
basket, please, till I come back."

And without a word more, the flower-girl put down her little basket at
the foot of the vegetable-stall, and ran away as fast as she could go.

When she turned out of the market-place, she found, early as it was,
that the street before her was pretty full; but as from the passage the
gentleman had taken to leave the market-place, she knew he could only
have gone in one direction, she had still hopes of finding him; and she
ran on and on, until she actually thought she saw the very person
before her; he had just taken off his hat, and was wiping his forehead
with his handkerchief.

"That is him," said the little flower-girl, "I am certain;" but just as
she spoke, some persons came between her and the gentleman, and she
could not see him. Still she kept running on; now passing off the
foot-path into the street, and then seeing the fat gentleman still
before her; and then again getting on the foot-path, and losing sight
of him, until at last she came up quite close to him, as he was walking
slowly, and wiping the drops of heat from his forehead.

The poor child was then quite out of breath; and when she got up to him
she could not call out to him to stop, nor say one word; so she caught
hold of the skirt of his coat, and gave it a strong pull.

The gentleman started, and clapped one hand on his coat-pocket, and
raised up his cane in the other, for he was quite sure it was a
pickpocket at his coat.