THE BROTHERS.
They were brothers—twin brothers, and the most intense fraternal affection subsisted between them. They were Peas—Sweet-peas, born together in the largest end of the same Pod. When they were little, flat, skinny, green things, they regarded the Pod in which they were born with the same awful dread which the greatest of men have at one time felt for nursery authority. They believed that the Pod ruled the world.
It was impossible to conceive a limit to the power of a thing that could hold so tight. But in due time the Peas became large and round and black, and the Pod got yellow and shrunken, and was thoroughly despised.
"It is time we left the nursery," said the brothers. "Where shall we go to, when we enter the world?" they inquired of the mother plant.
"You will fall on the ground," said she, "in the south border, where we now are. The soil is good, and the situation favourable. You will then lie quiet for the winter, and in the spring you will come up and flower, and bear pods as I have done. That will be your fate. Not eventful perhaps, but prosperous; and it comforts me to think that you are so well provided for."
But the best of parents cannot foresee everything in the future career of their children, and the mother plant was wrong.
The Peas burst from the Pod, it is true; but they fell, not into the south border, but into the hand of the seedsman to whom the garden belonged.
"This is an adventure," said the brothers.
They were put with a lot of other Sweet-peas, and a brown paper bag was ready to receive them.