|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 16
Grandmother's garden was a beautiful place,--more beautiful than all the
shop windows in the city; for there was a flower or grass for every
color in the rainbow, with great white lilies, standing up so straight
and tall, to remind you that a whole rainbow of light was needed to make
them so pure and white.
There were pinks and marigolds and princes' feathers, with bachelor's
buttons and Johnny-jump-ups to keep them company. There were gay poppies
and gaudy tulips, and large important peonies and fine Duchess roses in
pink satin dresses.
There were soft velvet pansies and tall blue flags, and broad
ribbon-grasses that the fairies might have used for sashes; and mint and
thyme and balm and rosemary everywhere, to make the garden sweet; so it
was no wonder that every year, the garden was full of visitors.
Nobody noticed these visitors but Grandmother and Lindsay.
Lindsay was a very small boy, and Grandmother was a very old lady; but
they loved the same things, and always watched for these little
visitors, who came in the early spring-time and stayed all summer with
Grandmother.
Early, early in the spring, when the garden was bursting into bloom in
the warm southern sunshine, Grandmother and Lindsay would sit in the
arbor, where the vines crept over and over in a tangle of bloom, and
listen to a serenade. Music, music everywhere! Over their heads, behind
their backs, the little brown bees would fly, singing their song:--
"_Hum, hum, hum!
Off and away!
To get some
Sweet honey to-day!"_
while they found the golden honey cups, and filled their pockets with
honey to store away in their waxen boxes at home.
One day, while Grandmother and Lindsay were watching, a little brown bee
flew away with his treasure, and lighting on a rose, met with a cousin,
a lovely yellow butterfly.
"I think they must be talking to each other," said Grandmother, softly.
"They are cousins, because they belong to the great insect family, just
as your papa and Uncle Bob and Aunt Emma and Cousin Rachel all belong to
one family,--the Greys; and I think they must be talking about the honey
that they both love so well."
"I wish I could talk to a butterfly," said Lindsay, longingly; and
Grandmother laughed.
"Play that I am a butterfly," she proposed. "What color shall I be?--a
great yellow butterfly, with brown spots on my wings?"
So Grandmother played that she was a great yellow butterfly with brown
spots on its wings, and she said to Lindsay:--
"Never in the world can you tell, little boy, what I used to be?"
"A baby butterfly," guessed Lindsay.
"Guess again," said the butterfly.
"A flower, perhaps; for you are so lovely," declared Lindsay, gallantly.
"No, indeed!" answered the butterfly; "I was a creeping, crawling
caterpillar."
"Now, Grandmother, you're joking!" cried Lindsay, forgetting that
Grandmother was a butterfly.
"Not I," said the butterfly. "I was a crawling, creeping caterpillar,
and I fed on leaves in your Grandmother's garden until I got ready to
spin my nest; and then I wrapped myself up so well that you would never
have known me for a caterpillar; and when I came out in the Spring I was
a lovely butterfly."
"How beautiful!" said Lindsay. "Grandmother, let us count the
butterflies in your garden." But they never could do that, though they
saw brown and blue and red and white and yellow ones, and followed them
everywhere.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|