"What a pretty little water-lily!" cried Ellen, who sat in the boat. "I will have it!"
She leant over the gunwale and wrenched off the flower. When she had got home she put it in a glass of water, and there it stood for three days among a whole company of other flowers.
"I can't make it out," it said on the morning of the fourth day. "I have not come off a bit better than that miserable dragon-fly."
"The flowers are now withered," said Ellen, and she threw them out of the window.
So there lay the water-lily with its fine white petals on the dirty ground.
The Dragonfly and the Waterlily"