Welcome to Homeschool Story Time: Week 15.
Emily and her grandmother go walking in the woods and discover something special!
They decide to bring it home to someone they love who is ill.
What do they find and who do they bring it home to?
Read on to find out.
Where the Jasmine Bells Were Ringing
by Alice Miller Weeks
The pine woodland was dark and sweet and cool, and grandmother and little Emily were walking through it, hand in hand, enjoying its peace and fragrance. The trees grew so closely on either side of the narrow path that hardly a glimpse of blue sky could be seen overhead, and not a shaft of golden sunlight was bold enough to shine down through the glossy pine needles, as both were thinking.
“Why, yes there is!” little Emily called suddenly, as if answering her own thoughts aloud. “There’s a sunbeam over there—right where the trees are thickest!”
Grandmother and she hurried to the spot; it seemed a little strange that the sunlight should have filtered down through such dense shade. And when they reached it, it was not sunshine at all. It was a delicate spray of clustered yellow bells, swaying from a slender thread of vine, and filling the spring air with delicious perfume.
“Oh, it’s jasmine!” grandmother and little Emily exclaimed, at the same moment. And a mockingbird, flying by, stopped a moment to trill a sweet strain, as if he, too, was glad to welcome back this lovely blossom of early spring.
Little Emily gathered the spray of golden bells very carefully, to carry it home to mother, who was not well enough to walk in the woodland and see it where it grew; and all that day and the next, the sweetness of the delicate flowers filled the room and seemed to speak of love and hope and cheer.
“They bring the sunshine and springtime right here to me,” the little girl’s mother said, looking lovingly at Emily. “They are like a small lassie I know, who helps to brighten all the dark places in my life.”
Emily looked questioningly at her mother. “What does that mean, mamma?” she asked. And grandmother, who was standing by, said, with a smile:
“You thought the jasmine bells, shining in the dark wood, were a gleam of sunshine, dear, brightening up the gloom. There are sometimes dark places in our lives, you know; mother is having one just now, while she is not well enough to go out herself into the sunshine. And her little daughter, by being sweet and cheery, is just such a gleam of sunshine to her as the jasmine bells were to the dark pine woods.”
Little Emily leaned over her mother for a kiss, then turned to touch caressingly the golden bells of the jasmine.
“Dear little sunshine flowers,” she said, lovingly. “I’ll try to remember you every day, and be a sunshine maker, too.”
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Many blessings,
