So the poor grub, with the funny, blinking eyes and the puffy face had fallen on the petals of a great sweet iris flower. Of course, as you know, every flower is the house of a fairy. And this house was a palace of blue flowers veined in gold, and blue fringes and tassels in the inmost inner room, where the wonderful fairy lived who was the flower princess.
The iris-flower princess rose from her couch of lavender and gold. It was then that she said, "I have waited for you—it is day."
And it was day, sparkling and gleaming on all the grass-blades.
The grubbiest grub—who was a dragon-fly prince now, in green velvet and a silken cloak, shimmering like wings behind him—and the flower princess stood on the flower palace steps, and looked out across the grass-blades.
All the little grass-blade spirits cried, "All hail, Prince Dragon-Fly!" and the flower princess—who would be queen now of all the winged folk as well—called to the grass-blade spirit who had urged Prince Dragon-Fly to find her. And as the little grass-blade fairy knelt there at her feet, she proclaimed him "Knight of the Grass-Blades, Keeper of the Dewdrops, and Lord High Admiral of the Garden Pond."
The folk at the bottom of the garden pond, however, went on just the same in spite of the New Dewdrop—High Lord, Grass-Blade Admiral. In fact, they didn't even know that there was a new admiral, and they never dreamed of the great coronation ceremony that was to make the poor little despised grubby thing the king of the winged creatures. They just thought about themselves as usual, and the success of the last ball, and the aristocratic turtles, and the extra shiny mud floor where the newest newt with the orange spots on his waistcoat had danced so beautifully with Sir Fat-Frog's fattest daughter.
THE DRAGON-FLY
To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie;
An inner impulse rent the veil