Слике страница
PDF
ePub

than when he met the little cripple who had sat on the outside of the crowd on the first feast day, not expecting to see or hear anything.

The cripple lived in a tiny hovel on the edge of the city, and when the glittering procession drew near it the small patch of garden was quite bare and had not a Blue Flower in it. And the little cripple was sitting huddled upon his broken door-step, sobbing softly with his face hidden in his arms.

King Amor drew up his white horse and looked at him and looked at his bare garden.

"What has happened here?" he said. "This garden has not been neglected. It has been dug and kept free of weeds, but my Law has been broken. There is no Blue Flower."

Then the little cripple got up trembling and hobbled through his rickety gate and threw himself down upon the earth before the King's white horse, sobbing hopelessly and heart-brokenly.

"Oh King!" he cried. "I am only a cripple, and small, and I can easily be killed. I have no flowers at all. When I opened my package of seeds I was so glad that I forgot the wind was blowing, and suddenly a great gust carried them all away forever and I had not even one left. I was afraid to tell anybody." And then he cried so that he could not speak. "Go on," said the young King gently. "What did you do?"

"I could do nothing," said the little cripple. "Only I made my garden neat and kept away the weeds. And sometimes I asked other people to let me dig a little for them. And always when I went out I picked up the

ugly things I saw lying about the bits of paper and rubbish — and I dug holes for them in the earth.

I have broken your Law."

But

Then the people gasped for breath, for King Amor dismounted from his horse and lifted the little cripple up in his arms and held him against his breast.

"You shall ride with me to-day," he said, "and go to my castle on the mountain crag and live near the stars and the sun. When you kept the weeds from your bare little garden, and when you dug for others and hid away ugliness and disorder, you planted a Blue Flower every day. You have planted more than all the rest, and your reward shall be the sweetest, for you planted without the seeds."

And then the people shouted until the world seemed to ring with their joy, and somehow they knew that King Mordreth's Land had come into fair days and they thought it was the Blue Flower magic.

"But the earth is full of magic," Amor said to the Ancient One, after the feast on the plain was over. "Most men know nothing of it and so comes misery. The first law of the earth's magic is this one. If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought there will be no room in it for an ugly one. This I learned from you and from my brothers the stars. So I gave my people the Blue Flower to think of and work for. It led them to see beauty and to work happily and filled the land with bloom. I, their King, am their brother, and soon they will understand this and I can help them, and all will be well. They shall be wise and joyous and know good fortune."

The little cripple lived near the sun and the stars in the castle on the mountain crag until he grew strong and straight. Then he was the King's chief gardener. The boy who was clever was made captain of his band, which became the King's own guard and never left him. And the gloom of King Mordreth's Land was forgotten, because it was known throughout all the world as The Land of the Blue Flower.

Frances Hodgson Burnett.

GREEN THINGS GROWING

Oh the green things growing, the green things growing,

The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!

I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,

Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.

Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!

How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;

In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight

Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing.

I love, I love them so, my green things growing! And I think that they love me without false showing; For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much, With the mute soft comfort of green things growing. Dinah Mulock Craik.

CHANDRA'S THREAD OF LUCK

"Go, Chandra; and may the stars tell aright that thou art born for a high place among men of thy caste."

As the father spoke he placed his hands on Chandra's bare shoulders, and looked earnestly into his son's face. "Remember all I have taught thee of the gardenthings," he went on. "Remember that thou must watch the insect-people as a tiger watches her cubs; and remember more than all else that the grandfather ways are best in everything."

"I will not forget," Chandra replied. "This thread hears my promise," and he touched with two fingers of his right hand the thread of sacred grass which his father had plaited that very morning and bound around his son's arm as a talisman for luck.

The man and boy had been standing for some time outside the great gates of the Maharajah's gardens. The sun had not yet peeped over the rim of the distant hills, and the city, which the day before had been all coral and gold in the flooding sunshine, seemed dull and sombre in the gray light of early dawn.

But now, with a rattle of tools, the magic man was coming down the street. When he clapped his hands at the entrance, the porter opened the gates to admit him, and Chandra slipped in, too, turning back for a hasty nod to his father, and then hurrying down the broad path to find the bed of marigolds.

For the next hour the old gardener, the magic man and the boy had not an idle moment, with the stirring of the earth about the roots, the building of a fire to

[graphic][merged small]
« ПретходнаНастави »