"I don't care," returned Cucu, "for I feel delighted, and so long as I can't see my own face, what's the odds?"
The next night was clear and very cold. The people to whom the garden belonged brought out sheets and covered over the tender heliotropes and other flowers they valued, but they couldn't have cared much for Queen Cucurbita, for they never gave her a thought. When Cucu woke up bright and early and said good-morning to his mother, she did not reply. He turned his head to look at her. Oh, frightful sight! she hung to the trellis wilted and dead; her green dress was brown and torn, but her hard and wrinkled hand still grasped poor Cucu's cap.
After the sun had been up some hours, a lady came into the garden and approached the home of the Cucurbita family.
"Oh, you beauty!" she cried, "what a lovely basket I shall make of you!" and, placing a hand on each of Cucu's cheeks, she gave him a slight twist,—his mother's fingers let go; he was free. The lady put him in her basket, and now he was really setting off on his travels.
This was, in fact, only the beginning of his career. The lady with a sharp knife lifted his cap from his head; then she painted him all over a pale green. After the paint was dry, she bored three holes in his sides. My! how it hurt! but it was soon over, and she had fastened three slender chains through them, and hung the little Prince up in a sunny window. "What next?" he wondered. If he had got to hang here all his life, it wouldn't be much better than the old trellis. But that wasn't the end, for his mistress filled him with nice black earth, and planted delicate little ferns and runaway-robins which climbed over and twined lovingly round his face. They patted his cheeks with their soft little hands, and whispered pretty stories of the woods they had come from.
"Dear Cucu," said they, "how much we love you, and how kind you are to hold us all so carefully!" When they said this, he felt so proud and happy that he could not contain himself any longer, and sang at the top of his voice; but the people in the house did not hear him, for mortal ears are not adapted to such music. Only the Cat-bird flying past understood and stopped to congratulate him.
"Plenty to do, and plenty to love," she sang; "that is the way to be happy. I found it out last spring when it took me from morning till night to find food for my four hungry babies. Good-bye! I am going south with them to-day. I haven't a bit of time to lose," and away she flew.
CUCURBITA IN THE WINDOW.
And the ferns and the runaway-robins clapped their hands and sang, "Yes, that is the secret. Good-bye! Good-bye!"