The flowers lasted all day, from sunrise to sunset, and the nectar lasted all day, and the snow-white pollen. But when night came the bees went home to sleep, and the morning-glories, too, slept. They rolled in the edges of their corollas so that the way to the nectar cups was closed.
Next day the morning-glories did not open again. There was no more nectar in their cups and no more snow-white pollen in their anther cells. Other morning-glories came out of their buds and invited the bees, but these staid shut. Soon the corollas, faded now and no longer lovely to look at, fell off. Their work was done. They had been beautiful to show how happy they were and how lovely life was; by their beauty, too, they had brought the bees and gained the pollen they wanted to make other lovely flowers live. Now, their messages of love and happiness given, they fell off, and the pollen boxes, empty and withered, fell with them.
But they left behind life and hope, for each tiny seed had received its grain of life-assuring pollen. For only the corolla and the stamens fell. The seed-children still clung to the stem; they lay in their cradles, nicely wrapped up by the green calyx leaves. And then the little stems that held the seed-babies’ cradles turned down and hid the little cradles under the leaves.
The seed-babies grew and grew. They would soon have outgrown their cradles, only the strange thing is, the cradles grew too! They grew as fast as the seeds and kept them snug and safe.
So all summer long, until the frost came and it was time for the morning-glories to take their long winter sleep, the buds opened in the morning. All summer long the bright morning-glories filled their cups with nectar and opened their boxes of snow-white pollen for the bees. And all summer long the seed-children received their pollen and grew and grew in their cradles that grew too. But after a while the green cradles turned brown. And after another while the brown cradles opened to let the seed-children look out, and as soon as this happened every little black seed—for they had grown quite black by this time—fell out of its cradle! It did not hurt it to fall out, for it tumbled and rolled down to the earth, where, at last, the wind came and covered it with leaves, as the robins covered up the babes in the woods. And the little black seed-babies lay there as snug as seed-babies could be.
Then the snow came and spread a blanket over them, and the leaves and the snow kept them as warm as they wanted to be until springtime came and the snow went away; and the seeds began to stretch themselves and think it was time to wake up and go out and see what was going on in the big world above.
THE OVULES
