I began to perceive her intention, and, much amused, I fetched the ladder. "Shall I hold it?" I asked, with seeming innocence.
"No. Go back to your work!"
I submitted, and went back to my roses, where the other girl was still standing. The little blonde vixen, as Siegfried had called her, went up the ladder, throwing me a haughty glance because I had the impertinence to watch her movements.
As I prepared for work again, I noticed that in the chalice of each flower, two or more green cetonias were to be found. The cetonia beetle is the deadliest foe of the rose, destroying it entirely, and since my boyhood, when I used to practise gardening at home, and was taught to kill a cetonia wherever I found it, I could not bear the sight of the glittering, green beetle. I was just crushing one under my foot, when the dark-haired girl near me cried out—
"Why do you kill that poor cetonia?"
"Because it injures the roses," I said.
"Well, let them alone! Who cares for the roses?"
"Who cares for the roses?" Is not that strange? A young girl taking the side of the harmful destroyer against the innocent victim!
The blonde descended the ladder, and her face, her hands, and her walk betrayed that she was vexed. I was very much amused. Was it not a joke that she had climbed up to my window to present me with my own rose, the rose she had taken out of my mouth? And was it not amusing to see her angry, because I had had the sauciness to watch the movements of those tiny slippered feet in pink stockings as they mounted the ladder and revealed a bewitching little ankle?
The black-haired girl turned to her and complained—"See, he kills our cetonias!" Whereupon the little one, with a queenly mien, stepped in front of me and said—