"Good-by, my friend; I shall bloom no more. My bright star hid his face from me last night and I have no desire to live longer. Perhaps I may see him after I am gone from here, and if that is true I shall be happy, but I cannot live here and not see his face.'"
The wind blew through the garden just then and took the lily from her stem, scattering her petals far out of the garden.
"Poor lily!" murmured the rose, "she went the way we all will go, but her heart was broken and she died before her time. If she had only looked for love here in the garden instead of looking so far above her she might be blooming now, poor lily."
headpiece to Lazy Gray
LAZY GRAY
All the other squirrels called him Lazy Gray, which was really not a very nice name for a squirrel to have, but it fitted this squirrel, and I am going to tell you how he came to be called by such an unpleasant name.
When Lazy Gray was born there were three little squirrels in his family, but he was the youngest and his mother thought he was the prettiest, and all the rest of the family used to wait on him a great deal, and his mother did not ask him to do errands or to climb trees or any other of the hard tasks that most squirrels have to do. And Lazy Gray took advantage of the kindness of his mother and his brothers and sister, and used to ask them to wait on him. When he was thirsty and wanted a drink of water he would call to his mother and say, "I am thirsty"; and she would take a nutshell and go down to the brook and fill it with nice cool water and bring it to him for him to drink. And sometimes he wouldn't even say "Thank you" when he had finished.
And he used to make his brothers go on long journeys through the woods to get a particular kind of nut of which he was very fond; and if they happened to bring him one that was not good he would find fault with them and tell them that they did not know good nuts from bad ones.
All through the summer he fooled away his time sleeping and lying in the sun and never a single nut did he gather for himself. But when fall came and his two brothers were taken ill, his mother said that he would have to help her gather nuts because she could not gather enough to last the whole family through all the long winter. Lazy thought it was very hard that he should be called upon to work for his brothers even if they were sick, and he complained very bitterly about how hard it was for him to climb trees all day and store nuts. Whenever he could he stole away and lay down behind a rock and kept hidden until his mother came and found him. And then she would tell how, when it got cold and there was snow all over the ground and he was hungry, he would wish that he had been a good squirrel and had gathered the nuts while he could.