“If you put it to sleep in the good brown earth, Andrea, if you tend it and wait with patience,” explained the Signorina, “you will see a wonder.”
Andrea turned the brown lump over and over in his hand. He rubbed it on the sleeve of his apron. He held it up to the light. It had no appearance of wonder; it was cold, it did not shine, it would not reflect the light. Did the Signorina, after all, know, Andrea wondered, as his big, wistful eyes looked out from the warm cheerfulness of the schoolroom to the chill, wind-swept spaces of the Convent garden. Memories of great banks of gold daisies, roses so heavy with crimson petals that they bent as low as the little green winding paths, winds sweet with perfume of the grape filled Andrea’s imagination. These had made the garden of the Children’s House yesterday. But how different it was to-day! Could the dead bulb which was his, now, to tend, to watch, to believe in, make for itself life and bloom?
Andrea, the matter-of-fact little man of four, was skeptical.
“Of what use is it to plant?” he queried.
“Try it! I will help you dig a hole,” Bruno, the helpful, volunteered.
“We will not let any child take it out of its bed; we will protect it for you, Andrea,” assured Piccola, flashing eyes full of the fire of anticipated battle.
“Cover it carefully with earth, and only be patient,” reiterated the Signorina. “Believe me. It will make for you a surprise.”
It was a momentous morning that marked Andrea’s planting. His fat fingers, holding the trowel, trembled. Like a circle of small acolytes, Bruno, Little Brother, Piccola, and the rest, white aprons fluttering in the wind, watched the sacrifice. Covered out of vision in its winter grave, the bulb disappeared and the children, now almost as skeptical as Andrea of its possible germ of life, ran back to their work in the schoolroom. All, save Andrea.
His baby hands, like two warm, brown leaves, fluttered over the earth prison of his bulb. Kneeling down on the frosty path, he bent low, listening, as if he hoped that he might perhaps hear the groping of new roots. It was all very cold, and perfectly still about the place where he had buried his little dead hope, but Andrea whispered to it: