"I will tell you," said a tall, graceful white lily that grew near the garden gate, one day, as she inclined her fair head toward them. "I have been where they are going—I and the tuberoses over yonder. (We are growing in pots sunk in the ground, and therefore can be taken up and moved from place to place without harm.) Once I helped deck a large, sunshiny room—I was a very young bud then—where a great many little children, looking like flowers themselves in their gay dresses, sang, and played, and laughed, and danced for joy, because a baby friend was three years old that day; and once I stood at the right hand of a gray-haired minister, in a crowded church, and heard him say, 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' But, dear, simple, wee things, you don't understand that, do you? I forgot to whom I was talking. They go to a large city, where nothing is seen but brick and stone buildings and hosts of people, and nothing is heard but the sound of voices and footsteps, and the ringing of bells, and the tramping of horses, and rolling of wagons, and where there are no bees, nor butterflies, nor birds, save canaries that live in cages, and sparrows that can live anywhere."
"But the daisies are never taken to the city," said the daisies, after a short pause, "and they are flowers as well as the verbenas and pinks."
"Bless your innocent little hearts! I know they are," said the lily. "But the fact is, no one cares to buy daisies."
"So nobody cares for us in the big city," said the daisies to each other, "and yet the butterflies and birds tell us we are very pretty."
But the lily was mistaken, for the very next morning the gardener came out into the meadow with a trowel in his hand, and digging up some of the largest daisy plants, replanted them in a large flower-pot.
"Somebody wants us after all," they called to the grass, and the dandelions, and the other daisies, as they were carried away, "and we shall see the fine houses, and perhaps live with lilies, roses, and geraniums all the rest of our lives. Good-by, dear friends, good-by."
In a short time the daisies found themselves in a market-place—not among cabbages and tomatoes, but at the end of a row of blooming plants from the garden at which they had so often peeped through the fence. But they had scarcely had time to look about them when they saw a shabbily dressed boy coming slowly toward them—slowly, poor fellow, because one of his feet was sadly misshapen, and in his arms he carried a heavy bundle of newspapers. He looked eagerly at the gardener as he came near.
"I've got your daisies, my boy," the man called, cheerily. "Here they are, still wet with the dew, as handsome daisies as ever I saw. You must keep them in the shade a day or two, giving them a drink now and then, and I don't doubt they'll do finely. Will you take them now?"
"Yes, sir, thank you," said the boy, his whole face lighting up, and his pale cheeks flushing, "if you will let me leave my papers here a few minutes until I can run home with them. But you've brought so many—and they're in a nice pot, too—I'm afraid I haven't money enough to pay for them."
"Five cents was the price agreed on yesterday," said the good-natured gardener, "and I always stick to a bargain. And if there's more than you expected, all the better for you—some of 'em'll be sure to thrive anyhow. As for the pot, you're welcome to that. A flower-pot more or less won't make me or break me."