The Pot of Gold | Page 3

beaten down, and he said to her how he wished he could find the Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow. Flax, if you will believe me, had never heard of it; so he had to tell her all about it, and also say a little poem he had made about it to her.
The poem ran something in this way:
O what is it shineth so golden-clear At the rainbow's foot on the dark green hill? 'Tis the Pot of Gold, that for many a year Has shone, and is shining and dazzling still. And whom is it for, O Pilgrim, pray? For thee, Sweetheart, should'st thou go that way.
Flax listened with her soft blue eyes very wide open. "I suppose if we should find that pot of gold it would make us very rich, wouldn't it, father?" said she.
"Yes," replied her father; "we could then have a grand house, and keep a gardener, and a maid to take care of the children, and we should no longer have to work so hard." He sighed as he spoke, and tears stood in his gentle blue eyes, which were very much like Flax's. "However, we shall never find it," he added.
"Why couldn't we run ever so fast when we saw the rainbow," inquired Flax, "and get the Pot of Gold?"
"Don't be foolish, child!" said her father; "you could not possibly reach it before the rainbow was quite faded away!"
"True," said Flax, but she fell to thinking as she tied up the dripping roses.
The next rainbow they had she eyed very closely, standing out on the front door-step in the rain, and she saw that one end of it seemed to touch the ground at the foot of a pine-tree on the side of the mountain, which was quite conspicuous amongst its fellows, it was so tall. The other end had nothing especial to mark it.
"I will try the end where the tall pine-tree is first," said Flax to herself, "because that will be the easiest to find--if the Pot of Gold isn't there I will try to find the other end."
A few days after that it was very hot and sultry, and at noon the thunder heads were piled high all around the horizon.
"I don't doubt but we shall have showers this afternoon," said Father Flower, when he came in from the garden for his dinner.
After the dinner-dishes were washed up, and the baby rocked to sleep, Flax came to her mother with a petition.
"Mother," said she, "won't you give me a holiday this afternoon?"
"Why, where do you want to go, Flax?" said her mother.
"I want to go over on the mountain and hunt for wild flowers," replied Flax.
"But I think it is going to rain, child, and you will get wet."
"That won't hurt me any, mother," said Flax, laughing.
"Well, I don't know as I care," said her mother, hesitatingly. "You have been a very good industrious girl, and deserve a little holiday. Only don't go so far that you cannot soon run home if a shower should come up."
So Flax curled her flaxen hair and tied it up with a blue ribbon, and put on her blue and white checked dress. By the time she was ready to go the clouds over in the northwest were piled up very high and black, and it was quite late in the afternoon. Very likely her mother would not have let her gone if she had been at home, but she had taken the baby, who had waked from his nap, and gone to call on her nearest neighbor, half a mile away. As for her father, he was busy in the garden, and all the other children were with him, and they did not notice Flax when she stole out of the front door. She crossed the river on a pretty arched stone bridge nearly opposite the house, and went directly into the woods on the side of the mountain.
Everything was very still and dark and solemn in the woods. They knew about the storm that was coming. Now and then Flax heard the leaves talking in queer little rustling voices. She inherited the ability to understand what they said from her father. They were talking to each other now in the words of her father's song. Very likely he had heard them saying it sometime, and that was how he happened to know it,
"O what is it shineth so golden-clear At the rainbow's foot on the dark green hill?"
Flax heard the maple leaves inquire. And the pine-leaves answered back:
"'Tis the Pot of Gold, that for many a year Has shone, and is shining and dazzling still."
Then the maple-leaves asked:
"And whom is it for, O Pilgrim, pray?"
And the pine-leaves answered:
"For thee, Sweetheart, should'st thou go that way."
Flax did not exactly understand