"'Then why do you keep looking at them, child?'
"The boy hesitated, and then answered, 'I don't know, mother.'
"'You don't know! nor I neither. Why, child, you look at the dumb things as if you loved them. Put on your cap and run out to play.'
"So the boy went out, and wandered toward the forest till he came to the brink of a sheet of water. It was too small to be called a lake, but it was deep, clear, and overhung with crowds of trees. It was evening, and the sun was getting low. There was a narrow strip of land stretching out into the water. Pine-trees grew upon it; and here and there a plane-tree or a sumach dipped its large leaves over, and seemed intent on watching its own clear reflection.
"The boy stood still, and thought how delightful it was to see the sun red and glorious between the black trunks of the pine-trees. Then he looked up into the abyss of clear sky overhead, and thought how beautiful it was to see the little frail clouds folded over one another like a belt of rose-colored waves. Then he drew still nearer to the water, and saw how they were all reflected down there among the leaves and flowers of the lilies; and he wished he were a painter, for he said to himself, 'I am sure there are no trees in the world with such beautiful leaves as these pines; I am sure there are no other clouds in the world so lovely as these; I know this is the sweetest piece of water in the world, and, if I could paint it, every one else would know it too.' He stood still for awhile, watching the water-lilies as they closed their leaves for the night, and listening to the slight sound they made when they dipped their heads under water. 'The sun has been playing tricks with these lilies as well as with the clouds,' he said to himself, 'for when I passed by in the morning they swayed about like floating snowballs, and now there is not a bud of them that has not got a rosy side. I must gather one, and see if I cannot make a drawing of it.' So he gathered a lily, sat down with it in his hand, and tried very hard to make a correct sketch of it in a blank leaf of his copy-book. He was far more patient than usual, but he succeeded so little to his own satisfaction, that at length he threw down the book, and, looking into the cup of his lily, said to it, in a sorrowful voice, 'Ah, what use is it my trying to copy anything so beautiful as you are? How much I wish I were a painter!'
"As he said these words he felt a slight quivering in the flower; and, while he looked, the cluster of stamens at the bottom of the cup floated upward, and glittered like a crown of gold; the dewdrops which hung upon them changed into diamonds before his eyes; the white petals flowed together; the tall pistil was a golden wand; and the next moment a beautiful little creature stood upon his hand, clad in a robe of the purest white, and scarcely taller than the flower from which she sprung.
