Joy is in her flower garden and is looking very happy. Smiles are playing about her lips and making dimples in her cheeks. The honey bees are buzzing about her, but she is not afraid of them in the least. She is gathering marigolds. The brightest, biggest and freshest of them bend their gold-crowned beads to her hand to pluck. There are sweet-peas, phlox, mignonette and roses a plenty in the garden; why does she not gather them? Surely they are preferable to the marigold, which has no fragrance, but Joy knows what flowers she wants.
Those who have eves to see Fairies may see many of them floating in a cloud of beautiful colors all around Joy. When she has gathered all the flowers she wishes, she binds their stems together and ties them up with a soft twine and looks satisfied with her bouquet. Then she sets out on a walk down the road and all the Fairies go with her, singing songs sweeter than the sweetest nightingales one ever heard. Joy is not noticing; them, but she is happy, sweet and good enough for the company of these beautiful Fairies.
Soon she comes to the cottage of Grandma Snowden. She finds her in the garden, which has in it many beautiful flowers, but not one marigold is to be seen, Grandma Snowden hears the click of the garden gate and turns to see the beaming" face of joy looming up above the great bunch of marigolds she carries.
"Why, Joy! Joy!" exclaimed Grandma Snowden. "What have you brought me? A great bunch of the flowers I love the very best: just the very best! Why, Joy! You honey sweet! What put it into your dear voting head to bring them to me?" Then Joy breaks into a laugh as merry as that of the rippling brook which hurries over its pebbly bed just outside of Grandma Snowden's garden.
"Why. Grandma Snowden," says Joy. "I heard the girls laughing at you in school to-day, because they heard you say that you 'loved marigolds', and they thought they were 'just horrid'." Then Grandma Snowden laughs and Joy laughs, and Grandma Snowden smells the marigolds and says she likes them, their scent and golden color, and that they always give her "pleasant thoughts". Then Joy says she likes them too, and they laugh together again — Grandma and Joy.
When Joy goes home she has some of each flower that grows in Grandma Snowden's garden, which she and Joy have plucked together, chatting all the time like the best of comrades. On the way she meets her brother Jay, who is very glad to see her, for he says: "Why, joy, I have been looking everywhere for you!
"Now I want you to do something for me, Joy, and I'll tell you. Rob has been up to the house and we have made it up between us to go off to-morrow for a day's fishing. He is coming up to stay with me to-night, so that we can make an early start. Mother says we must have a warm breakfast before we go, and I can't get Molly to promise us anything before the regular breakfast time. Now, Joy, won't you. like a dear, dear girl, get up early and fix us some coffee and eggs, or anything like that, you know. I've been to Rob's house and he has had a good breakfast for me."
Here Jay looked earnestly in Joy's face to see how she was going to take his proposition. Just here, eyes for seeing fairies could see a commotion in the ranks of the bright troop which had been all along with Joy. They seem struck, taken off their feet, as it were. They begin to grow weak and fall like rose petals from their stem, and in place of the beautiful cloud they lived in, there comes on a dark mist, and looking out of it here and there in the mist are disagreeable imp-like faces, and this mist begins to envelop Joy so that her red lips and laughing eyes go out of sight.
Jay does not see all this, of course, but he sees Joy hesitate and not look pleased. The fact is, happy-hearted, good natured, generous, loving Joy has one fault — she is lazy, and never so lazy as in the early morning. And now the thought of getting up perhaps as early as 5 o'clock is a very distasteful and disagreeable one, and comes like a dark cloud over her spirit of good temper.
Jay sees this and tries to call up a rallying force: "I say now. Joy, I will call you, and when you are awake you will never know whether it is 5 o'clock or 7. If you will just do this for me, Joy. I'll promise to bring you the biggest bunch of cardinal flowers I can get."
Now Joy admires the cardinal flower very much, and has many a time-risked getting wet feet and muddy dress just to secure a few sprays. When the cardinal flowers are mentioned by Jay, those with eyes for the Fairies see a break in the dark mist and a revival of life among the bright Fairies which have been so smitten with the dark mist. They begin to get up on their feet again, and to shake out their rumpled dresses, and when they hear what Joy says, they just bound up and sparkle again like dew-drops in the morning sun.
"You know, Jay", says Joy, "I love the cardinal flowers better than any others in the world, and I do hope you will bring some to me. Yet I would not get up so early for a cart load of cardinal flowers, but I mean to get over being so lazy in the mornings. I have been intending to make a start all along, and now I will give myself the first lesson to-morrow morning, if you will call me. Say Fire! and that will start me. I will get up sure and get your breakfast."
Jay laughs loud and merrily. "Good idea! I will start the range fire first and then I'll cry you up with Fire! You are a dear girl, Joy, and I thank you a lot for this — I knew I could count on you, Joy."
The dark mist by this time is all gone, and Joy speeds along home as happy as when she went out with the marigolds. She goes up on the porch, where she finds her father and mother sitting. She shows her pretty bouquet with great delight and tells them all about her call on Grandma Snowden. "Have you got your lessons, Joy", asks her father. "Yes, papa", says Joy, "all but a little copying which will take me about five minutes." "Very well, do it now," said the father, "and then will you play for me my favorite?"
Here another little dark cloud begins to form and little imp faces peep out, but they are almost immediately swept out of sight and hearing by a song the bright Fairies strike up, which cannot be here written down but it meant just this: "Isn't it nice that Joy knows her papa's "favorite" so well? She will have no bother in hunting the music and making a light, and then if her mamma asks for her favorite she knows just as well. That is the good of having our persevering Fairies in service."
Joy is just going to ask her little sister, who is rocking her dollies to sleep, to run in the house for her school-books, but she thinks just in time and gets them for herself. While she works at her copying, a little black mist gathers and drifts right across her face as she is thinking: "It is a great deal nicer to sit here under this honey-suckle vine, than in the dark parlor playing even papa's 'favorite'. "But the light fairies are on guard and through them she gets a whiff from a spray of late blooming honey-suckle, which makes her think: "How lovely that I can play it so easily. If I had not kept at it, I never could have done so."
"Now, papa", she says brightly. "I am all ready to play for you your 'favorite' ", and skips into the room as blithely as a bird. In the midst of her playing she hears a carriage stop, but she does not stop her playing until her father calls her. Then she comes quickly out on the porch. Close up to it on the carriage-drive is a shining carriage and prancing horses, and in the carriage is her aunt and uncle and her best-beloved cousin Fay. "O isn't it glorious!" And cousin Fay is saying, "We are going to stay at the Point for a week, and we have come to get Joy to go back with us and stay over night".
Down goes Joy's heart and on come the dark Fairies again. "O mamma! I promised that I would surely get an early breakfast in the morning for Jay and Rob, and I must'', says Joy, and the tears in her eyes are almost ready to drop. And the thought is in her heart that this is just a little too hard a trial for her to bear. For a minute the dark Fairies acted as if they had won the day, for they take a wicked delight in seeing people unhappy; but mamma comes to the rescue. "Why will you not leave Fay here for the night, and drive over for her in the morning? Then Jay can see her and Rob too, and they can all have a happy time together." "Yes, yes," echoed the girls. "O papa! O mamma! let us do that." And so it was. And the dark Fairies just shriveled up like burnt leaves, and the shadows flew away like smoke, and the beautiful Fairies floated all around everybody. But they hugged Joy the most because they knew her best and had become used to fighting off the Fairies of the dark mist for her.
The early breakfast was a grand success. Joy and Fay, Jay and Bob and all the sweet gay Fairies breakfasted together.