There was once a little boy named Tommy. Tommy was not a big, strong, handsome boy. He was very thin. His family was very poor. So Tommy often went to bed hungry because there wasn't enough to eat.
He had rather colorless pale hair and a very pale face. But he did have a lovely smile that showed in his eyes as well as on his lips. Everybody liked Tommy because of that lovely, smiling way of his when he talked and played with his friends.
His teacher liked him, too. She always had a kind word for him. Often she asked him to stay after school for a little treat of some kind in the way of a cookie, or an orange. She hoped it would build him up a bit.
Tommy loved his teacher very much. He wished he could give her something to show his love. But he had no money to buy a gift. What was he to do?
He began thinking very hard. These are the thoughts he had:
"Love makes me feel happy. It makes me want to do something nice, to give something nice to the one I love. Love is a warm feeling about someone.
"Warmth makes me think of a fire on the hearth. Fire is a warm, happy, rosy glow."
And that's how Tommy began to think about a rose for the teacher he loved!
But how and where to get one was something else. At that point he remembered what his mother had once told him. She had said, "God loves all of his creatures. Even the littlest bird is important to Him."
And that's how Tommy remembered to ask God to help him!
The next morning he got up early. After eating the little bowl of warm cereal his mother had ready for him, he started out sure that something special was about to happen. There was a chill in the air and he shivered. He noticed how the leaves were beginning to fall from the trees. Winter was on its way.
He was about to pass a little, yellow house when he noticed an old lady standing at the door. She was looking at all the leaves as they fell on her walk and shaking her head.
Tommy marched right over to her and said, smiling, "Good morning - would you like to have me rake the leaves from your walk?"
"Why, thank you so much. That would be so kind of you and such a help to me. I'll be glad to pay you for it."
Tommy set to work. The walk ran around to the back of the house. When he had finished, he looked at the pretty garden in the back yard. What do you think he saw? A big bush of deep-pink roses!
Tommy was very excited. He knocked at the back door. The lady opened it right away and held out a shiny coin and said, "You did a fine job - thank you, my little friend."
Tommy said, "Thanks just the same, but would you please give me one of your beautiful roses instead?"
The old lady smiled at him and then went over to the bush and cut three of the long stemmed, lovely, pink roses. She insisted that he take the coin, too. Tommy's smile and good manners had made her like him very much.
The teacher exclaimed with pleasure when Tommy gave her the roses. "These are the loveliest, pink roses I've ever seen! Thank you, thank you!
She put them in a vase of water and all day she and Tommy and all the children enjoyed their beauty. The whole room was filled with their fragrance. It was the fragrance of love.
Tommy says that the color of love is a beautiful, deep pink.
(by Roslyn Lightblau; ‘The Child’s way” magazine, no. 87, May-June 1963)
