“Yes, that’s the pity of it,” said the grub, a little disheartened. “I myself don’t know how it is to happen; but I still hope that it will. That’s why I crawl around here and eat all the little insects I can catch.”
“Ah, so you think you can eat yourself into something big!” said the water-lily, mockingly. “That would be a pleasant way of improving one’s condition.”
“Yes, but I believe it’s the right way for me!” cried the dragon-fly grub. “I shall eat and eat all day, till I grow stout and fat, and then, one fine morning, I hope my fat will change into wings with gold on them and all the rest that a real dragon-fly wants.”
The water-lily shook her wise white head:
“Let those foolish thoughts be,” she said, “and learn to be contented with your lot. You can now live in peace and quiet among my leaves and creep up and down my stalk as much as ever you like. You have plenty of food and no cares nor worries: what more can you want?”
“You have an inferior nature,” answered the grub, “and therefore you have no sense of higher things. I want to become a dragon-fly!”
And then she crept down to the bottom to catch lots of little insects and eat herself fatter than ever.
The water-lily lay quietly on the water and reflected:
“I can’t understand animals!” she said to herself. “They do nothing but dance about from morn till night, hunt and eat one another and know no moment’s peace. We flowers are more sensible. We grow up calmly and placidly, side by side, drink sunshine and rain and take everything as it comes. And I am the luckiest of them all. How often have I not floated contentedly here on the water, while the other flowers were suffering from the drought on land! We flowers are by far the happier; but that is what those stupid animals fail to see.”