Surveying myself in my bravery, I asked my mother: “But what am I to do now?”
“Go take care of the chickens,” she said; “don’t let them stray—and you stay in the shade.”
Full of zeal I ran off to the chickens, who were pecking about for ears of corn in the stubble. While at my post, curiously enough I perceive all at once a crested pullet giving chase to—what do you think? Why, a grasshopper, the kind with red and blue wings. Both, with me after them, for I wished to examine those wings, were soon dancing over the fields and, as luck would have it, we found ourselves before long at the draw-well moat.
And there were those golden flowers again mirrored in the water and exciting my desire; but a desire so passionate, delirious, excessive, as to make me entirely forget my two previous disasters.
“This time,” I said to myself, “I will certainly succeed.”
So descending the bank I twisted around my hand a reed that grew there, and leaning over the water very prudently, tried once again to reach the iris blooms with the other hand. But misery! the reed broke and played me false—into the middle of the stream I plunged head foremost.
I righted myself as best I could and shrieked like a lost one. Every one came running.
“There’s the little imp, in the water again! This time, you incorrigible youngster, your mother will give you the whipping you deserve.”
But she did not. Down the pathway I saw her coming, the poor mother, and tears were in her eyes.
“O Lord,” she cried, “but I won’t whip him; he might have a fit—this boy is not like others. By all the saints he does nothing but run after flowers; he loses all his toys scrambling in the cornfields after nosegays. Now, as a climax, he has thrown himself three times within an hour into this moat! I can only clean him up, and thank heaven he is not drowned.”