"It is that odious Poppy who is the cause of all this!" said the flowers one to another (little Carie was indeed playing in her immediate vicinity when she was seized with that dreadful distress), "she has poisoned her." And their suspicions were confirmed when one of the servants came running into the garden, and seizing hold of the Poppy, stripped off every one of her bright scarlet petals, and gathering them up, returned quickly to the house.
"You poor thing!" said the Elder, as the Poppy, so rudely handled, bent down her dishonoured head to the ground; but not one of the other flowers addressed to her a single word.
Through the long day she lay there—the Poppy—on the earth, trying to forget what had happened; for she did not know but their words were true, and she was the cause of the little girl's suffering—she would so gladly have soothed her pain. The other flowers thought she was dead, and the Poppy herself believed that she should never see the light of another morning; but just before the day was gone, the lady walked again into the garden accompanied by her husband; and—what do you suppose the other flowers thought?—without noticing one of them, the lady walked directly to the Poppy, lifted her head from the ground, and leaned it against the frame which supported the proud Carnation, and then, with her white hands, replaced the loosened earth about her half uptorn roots.
"Oh, I hope it will not die!" she said to her husband, "I should rather lose anything else in the garden, for I don't know but it saved dear little Carie's life! She had a dreadful headache, and nothing afforded her the least relief, till we bruised the leaves of the Poppy, and bound them on her temples, and then she became quiet, and fell into a gentle sleep. Oh, I hope it will live!"
Don't you think the Poppy did live, and was proud and happy enough? Do you think she was ever afterwards ashamed of her little green cap, or her ragged scarlet leaves? And do you think the other flowers ever laughed at her again, or were ashamed of her acquaintance?
When the summer had passed away, and the bright blossoms one by one withered and died before the autumn's cool breath, the Poppy cheerfully scattered her little seeds on the earth, and laid herself down to die; for she knew that when another spring should come, and her children should shoot up from the ground, they would be nurtured as tenderly, and prized as highly as those of the sweeter and far more beautiful flowers.
NUMBER TWELVE.
WHEN I was a young man, working at my trade as a mason, I met with a severe injury by falling from a scaffolding placed at a height of forty feet from the ground. There I remained, stunned and bleeding, on the rubbish, until my companions, by attempting to remove me, restored me to consciousness. I felt as if the ground on which I was lying formed a part of myself; that I could not be lifted from it without being torn asunder; and, with the most piercing cries, I entreated my well-meaning assistants to leave me alone to die. They desisted for the moment, one running for the doctor, another for a litter, others surrounding me with pitying gaze; but amidst my increasing sense of suffering, the conviction began to dawn upon my mind, that the injuries were not mortal; and so, by the time the doctor and the litter arrived, I resigned myself to their aid, and allowed myself, without further objection, to be carried to the hospital.
There I remained for more than three months, gradually recovering from my bodily injuries, but devoured with an impatience at my condition, and the slowness of my cure, which effectually retarded it. I felt all the restlessness and anxiety of a labourer suddenly thrown out of employment difficult enough to procure, knowing that there were scores of others ready to step into my place; that the job was going on, and that, ten chances to one, I should never set my foot on that scaffolding again. The visiting surgeon vainly warned me against the indulgence of such passionate regrets—vainly inculcated the opposite feeling of gratitude demanded by my escape; all in vain. I tossed on my fevered bed, murmured at the slowness of his remedies, and might have thus rendered them altogether ineffectual, had not a sudden change been effected in my disposition by another, at first unwelcome, addition to our patients. He was placed in the same ward with me, and insensibly I found my impatience rebuked, my repinings hushed for very shame, in the presence of his meek resignation to far greater privations and sufferings. Fresh courage sprang from his example, and soon, thanks to my involuntary physician, I was in a fair road to recovery.