So he made himself very small, ran along the hall, crept out through a tiny green door and found himself tied securely to a swaying branch. The air was cool and sweet. He didn’t melt, as he half-feared he might, and he didn’t fall off. He looked around. Yes, this was the very bush he had seen before, but it was greener now. Morning came and the great Festival. The garden was full of flowers and folks.
There were lilacs and lilies of shades manifold
There were daisies, and daffodils, yellow as gold.
There were pansies, and peonies, red, white and pink,
And every such flower of which you can think.
You ought to have heard the “Ah’s!” and the “Oh’s!”
Of all the fine people in all their fine clothes.
You ought to have seen that wonderful sight,
For no rhyme of mine can describe it half right.
People went from bush to bush and from flower to flower. They could not for the life of them tell which blossom they thought most beautiful and original.
The judges wandered about uncertainly with the ribbons in their pockets not knowing to what plant or bush to tie them.
The snowball grew very much interested, not to say excited, to see what blossom would finally win the prize.
He noticed that groups of people continually stopped before the bush on which he hung. Apparently they admired it. He soon discovered that they were looking at him and was quite embarrassed.
“Look!” he kept hearing them say. “See this snowball,—and it doesn’t melt! Why, it’s growing on the bush; it’s a blossom!” That was the first that he knew that Life-of-the-Bush had changed him from a snowball into a flower snowball. Of course he became very happy and twice as excited.
Indeed, he could hardly breathe from excitement, when the judges came over, in a group, to where he grew. They looked at him and at the bush. Apparently they had never seen blossoms of this kind before.
“I never saw such a big, round, white blossom before,” he heard one of them say, as he drew a blue ribbon from his pocket and tied it to the stem on which he hung. He knew and soon, of course, everybody knew that the “Snowball Bush” had won the prize. His heart beat so fast that he thought he was growing red in the face. Perhaps he was melting! But he wasn’t, for he heard a girl say just then, as she passed, “How white and cool it looks!”