But all at once she heard a familiar voice, and then she saw familiar eyes. The voice was tender and the eyes were kindly.
"O honest thrush," cried the rose, "is it you who have come to reproach me for my folly?"
"No, no, dear rose," said the thrush, "how should I speak ill to you? Come, rest your poor head upon my breast, and let me bear you home."
"Let me rather die here," sighed the rose, "for it was here that my folly brought me. How could I go back with you whom I never so much as smiled upon? And do they not hate and deride me in the valley? I would rather die here in misery than there in shame!"
"Poor, broken flower, they love you," urged the thrush. "They grieve for you; let me bear you back where the mother-tree will shade you, and where the south wind will nurse you—for—for he loves you."
So the thrush bore back the withering rose to her home in the quiet valley.
"So she has come back, has she?" sneered the dormouse. "Well, she has impudence, if nothing else!"
"She was pretty once," said the old hoptoad; "but she lost her opportunity when I made up my mind to go wooing a certain glossy damsel in the hedge."
The rose-tree reached out her motherly arms to welcome her dying daughter, and she said: "Rest here, dear one, and let me rock you to repose."
It was evening in the quiet valley now. Where was the south wind that he came not with his wooing? He had flown to the North, for that day he had heard the spring-time's voice a-calling, and he went in answer to its summons. Everything was still. "Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," piped the three crickets, and forthwith the fairy boy and the elf-prince danced from their habitations. Their little feet tinkled over the clover and the daisies.