"Oh, how willingly!" whispered the daisy. Now her golden heart was full of joy.
"What a happy, happy world!" she thought. "Although it is so wide, there is a place for me. I can be useful and give pleasure. What could be better than that?"
Thankfully she spread her shining petals to the sun. When night came she folded their tips together, and hung her head, to rest till morning light again brought happiness.
DICKIE CODLIN
The spring winds rocked Dickie Codlin to and fro as he lay in his scented cradle, and the happy bees buzzed their honey song over him. For he lay wrapped in his tiny egg-skin in the heart of an apple blossom. Mrs. Moth had gently laid him there only a day or two before.
The pink apple-petals loosened their hold and dropped to the ground, and the flower closed up and grew into an apple. And Dickie Codlin hatched himself out of his egg-skin and grew into a little caterpillar, with a pink and white skin and ever so many fat, short legs. He still lived on in the heart of the apple.
It was a delightful place to have for a home, for the walls were made of the food he liked best, and all he had to do was to turn himself round and nibble. So he stayed there, eating and growing, till he could not grow any bigger. Then he ate his way out to the skin.
He stood in the entrance of the opening he had made, and looked down. "Dear me!" he said, "it seems a long way to the ground. But I must reach it somehow."
He sat down on the apple and spun a silk thread, fixed it to the hole through which he had come, and dropped by it. "Good-bye, apple-home," he called as he went; but the apple said nothing, for its heart was eaten out.