One summer’s night, Clara went to her room. The moon was at its full, and was shining through the window so brightly that she needed no other light. Clara sat at the window feeling very unhappy. She was thinking over her conduct through the day, and was trying to imagine how it could be that on some days she was happy and on others so wretched.
As she mused, she laid her head back on the easy chair. No sooner had she shut her eyes than a strange thing happened. A feeble old man, carrying a basket, came into the room. In his basket, which he seemed hardly able to bear, were a handful of flowers and two great stones.
“My daughter,” said the old man, “will you help me for I am too old to carry this load; please lighten it.” Clara looked at him, pouting, and exclaimed, “Go away!”
“But I am weak and suffering,” he said; “will you not lighten my load?” At last Clara took the flowers out of his basket. They were very beautiful and she laid them in her lap.
“My daughter,” said the old man, “you have not lightened my basket; you have taken only the pleasant things out of it, and have left the heavy stones. Please lift one of them out of the basket.”
“Go away!” exclaimed Clara angrily. “I will not touch those dirty stones!”
No sooner had she said this than the old man began to change before her and to become so bright and white that he looked like a column of crystal. He took one of the stones and cast it out of the window, and it flew and flew, and fell on the eastern side of a grove where the sun shone first every morning.
Then the crystal old man took the flowers out of Clara’s lap. They were wet with dew, and he shook them over her head and exclaimed, “Change into a flower! Go and stand by the stone till your shadow shall be marked upon it.”
In a second, Clara was growing by the side of the wide, flat stone, and the moon cast upon it her shadow,—the shadow of a beautiful flower with a long and slender stem. All night she was very wretched. In the morning, she could not help looking at herself in a brook which came close up to the stone; then she recognised the beautiful flower and knew that her name was now Columbine.
All day her shadow fell upon the stone, but when the sun went away, the shadow, too, went away. At night her faint shadow lay upon the stone but when the moon went away, her shadow, also, went away. And the stone lay still all day and all night, and did not care for the flower nor feel its shadow.