Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner)/Little Ida's Flowers
LITTLE IDA'S FLOWERS
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"MY LITTLE FLOWERS ARE QUITE DEAD!" SAID LITTLE IDA.
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LITTLE IDA'S FLOWERS
"MY poor flowers are quite dead!" said little Ida. "They were so beautiful last night, and now all the leaves are hanging down quite faded! Why are they doing that?" she asked the student, who sat on the sofa. She was very fond of him; he could tell the most beautiful stories and cut out the funniest pictures, such as hearts with little damsels who danced, and flowers, and large castles with doors that could be opened; he was indeed a merry student!
"Why do the flowers, look so poorly to-day?" she asked again, and showed him a whole bouquet which was entirely faded.
"Don't you know what's the matter with them?" said the student. "The flowers were at a ball last night, and that's why they hang their heads!"
"But flowers cannot dance!" said little Ida.
"Oh, yes," said the student, "when it is dark and we are asleep, they run about quite merrily; almost every night they hold a ball!"
"Can't children go to those balls?"
"Yes," said the student, "as tiny daisies and lilies of the valley."
"Where do the prettiest flowers dance?" asked little Ida.
"Haven't you often been outside the gate of the great palace, where the king lives in summer, and where there is a beautiful garden with many flowers? You have seen the swans, which swim toward you when you want to give them bread crumbs. They hold real balls out there, I can tell you!"
"I was there in the garden yesterday with my mother," said Ida; "but all the leaves had fallen off the trees, and there were no flowers at all! Where are they? Last summer I saw so many!"
"They are in the palace," said the student. "You must know that as soon as ever the king and all the court move into the town, the flowers at once run away from the garden up to the palace and make merry. You ought to see that! Two most beautiful roses take a seat on the throne, and then they are king and queen. All the red cockscombs range themselves by their side and stand bowing; they are the chamberlains. Then all sorts of lovely flowers arrive and then they have a great ball; the blue violets represent little midshipmen, and dance with hyacinths and crocuses whom they call young ladies. The tulips and the large tiger-lilies are the old ladies; they see that the dancing is done well and that everything is properly conducted!"
"But," asked little Ida, "doesn't any one do anything to the flowers for dancing in the king's palace?"
"There is no one who really knows anything about that," said the student. "Sometimes the old keeper who looks after the palace out there, comes round at night, but he has a large bunch of keys, and as soon as the flowers hear the keys rattle, they are quite quiet and hide themselves behind the long curtains and peep out.
"'I can smell that there are some flowers in here!' says the old keeper, but he cannot see them."
"That's great fun," said little Ida, clapping her hands. "But shouldn't I be able to see the flowers either?"
"Yes," said the student, "just remember when you go there again to peep in through the window, and you are sure to see them. I did so to-day, and there lay a long yellow daffodil on the sofa, stretching herself and imagining herself to be one of the ladies of the court!"
"Can the flowers in the Botanical Gardens also go there? Can they go such a long way?"
"Yes, of course!" said the student, "for they can fly if they like. Haven't you seen the beautiful butterflies, red, yellow, and white; they almost look like flowers, and that is what they once were. They have flown from the stalks right up into the air, flapping with their leaves as if they were little wings. And as they behaved well, they were allowed to fly about in the daytime also, and were not obliged to remain at home and sit still on the stalk, and so the leaves became real wings at last. You have seen that yourself! It may be, however, that the flowers in the Botanical Gardens have never been to the king's palace, and do not know that they have such a merry time at night out there. I will therefore tell you something which will greatly surprise the botanical professor, who lives next door—you know him, don't you? When you go into his garden, you must tell one of the flowers that there is going to be a great ball at the palace, and he again will tell it to all the others, and then they will all fly off. When the professor comes into the garden there will not be a single flower left, and he will not be able to make out what has become of them."
"But how can the flower tell it to the others? The flowers cannot talk!"
"That's true!" answered the student, "but they make signs to one another. Haven't you seen when the wind blows a little that the flowers nod to one another and move all their green leaves? They understand it as plainly as if they spoke!"
"Can the professor understand their language?" asked Ida.
"Yes, of course! He came down into his garden one morning and saw a big nettle making signs with its leaves to a beautiful red carnation; it said, 'You are so lovely, and I am so fond of you.' The professor does not like such goings on, so he gave the nettle a slap across its leaves, for they are its fingers, you know; but he stung himself, and since then he never dares to touch a nettle."
"How funny!" said little Ida with a laugh.
"What ideas to put into the child's head!" remarked the tiresome counselor, who had come on a visit and was sitting on the sofa. He did not like the student and was always grumbling when he saw him cutting out the funny, comic pictures, sometimes a man hanging on a gallows and holding a heart in his hand, for he had been a destroyer of hearts, sometimes an old witch riding on a broom and carrying her husband on her nose. The counselor did not like that, and so he would say as he had done just now: "What ideas to put into the child's head! It is pure imagination!"
But it seemed to little Ida that what the student had told her about her flowers was very amusing, and she thought a great deal about it. The flowers hung their heads, because they were tired of dancing all the night; they must be poorly. So she carried them with her to a nice little table where she kept all her toys and the whole drawer was full of pretty things. In the doll's bed lay her doll Sophia, asleep, but little Ida said to her: "You must really get up, Sophia, and be content with lying in the drawer to-night; the poor flowers are poorly and they must lie in your bed; perhaps they will then get well again!" And so she took the doll, who looked very cross but did not say a single word, because she was angry at not being allowed to keep her bed.
Ida put the flowers in the doll's bed, pulled the little quilt over them, and said they must lie quiet and she would make tea for them, so that they might get well again and be able to get up in the morning. She then drew the curtains closely round the little bed, so that the sun should not shine in their eyes.
The whole evening she could not help thinking about what the student had told her, and when she had to go to bed herself, she felt she must first go behind the curtains which hung before the windows, where her mother's lovely flowers were standing, both hyacinths and tulips, and then she whispered quite softly, "I know you are going to a ball to-night!" but the flowers appeared as if they understood nothing and did not move a leaf, but little Ida knew—what she knew.
When she had got into bed she lay for a long time thinking how nice it would be to see the beautiful flowers dance at the king's palace.
"I wonder if my flowers really have been there?" And so she fell asleep. In the course of the night she awoke; she had been dreaming about the flowers and the student, whom the counselor used to scold for putting silly ideas into her head. It was quite quiet in the bedroom where Ida was lying; the night-lamp was burning on the table and her father and mother were asleep.
"I wonder if my flowers are now lying in Sophia's bed," she said to herself, "how I should like to know!" She raised herself a little and looked toward the door, which was half open; in there lay the flowers and all her toys. She listened, and it appeared to her as if she heard some one playing the piano in the next room, very softly, and more beautifully than she had ever heard it before.
"I expect all my flowers are now dancing in there!" she said, "how I should like to see them!" But she dared not get up for fear of waking her father and mother. "If they would only come in here," she said; but the flowers did not come, and the music continued to play so beautifully that she could not resist it any longer,—it was too entrancing,—so she crept out of her little bed and went quite softly to the door and looked into the room. Oh, what an amusing scene met her sight!
There was no night-lamp in there, but still it was quite light; the moon was shining through the window right into the middle of the room! It was almost as light as day. All the hyacinths and tulips were standing in two long rows along the floor; there were none at all in the window, where only empty pots were to be seen. Down on the floor the flowers were dancing most gracefully round and round, doing the chain quite correctly and holding each other by their long green leaves as they swung round. And over at the piano sat a large yellow lily whom little Ida was sure she had seen last summer, for she remembered so well that the student had said: "How she is like Miss Lina!" but they all laughed at him then. But now Ida really thought that the long yellow flower was like Miss Lina, and had just the same manners when playing, putting her large yellow head first on one side and then on the other, and nodding it to keep time with the music. No one noticed little Ida. She then saw a large blue crocus jump right onto the middle of the table, where the toys were standing, and walk straight up to the doll's bed and pull aside the curtains; there lay the sick flowers, but they got up directly and nodded their heads to the others to show that they also wanted to join in the dance. The old incense-burner with the broken under-lip stood up and bowed to the pretty flowers; they did not appear at all ill, they jumped down among the others and looked so pleased.
Just then it seemed as if something fell down from the table. Ida looked that way; it was the Shrove-tide rod,[1] which had jumped down; it thought it also belonged to the flowers. It was really very pretty; at the top sat a little wax doll, which had just the same kind of broad hat on her .jpg)
DOWN ON THE FLOOR THE FLOWERS WERE DANCING MOST GRACEFULLY ROUND AND ROUND, HOLDING EACH OTHER BY THEIR LONG, GREEN LEAVES.
All at once the wax doll on the rod began to grow bigger and bigger, whirled round above the paper flowers, and called out quite loudly: "What ideas to put into the child's head! It is pure imagination!" And then the wax doll looked exactly like the counselor with the broad hat, and was just as yellow and cross as he, but the paper flowers struck him across his
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THE FLOWERS LED SOPHIA INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR AND DANCED WITH HER, SOME OF THEM FORMING A CIRCLE ROUND HER.
thin legs; and he shrank and shrank till he became a little wee bit of a wax doll again. He looked so very funny, little Ida could not help laughing! The Shrove-tide rod went on dancing and the counselor had to dance as well; there was no help for it, he had to dance whether he made himself big and long, or became the little yellow wax doll with the big black hat. Then the other flowers interceded for him, especially those that had been in the doll's bed, and at last the Shrove-tide rod stopped dancing.
At that moment there was a loud knocking in the drawer where Ida's doll Sophia lay among the other toys; the incense-burner ran to the edge of the table, laid himself flat down upon his stomach and managed to get the drawer pulled out a little; whereupon Sophia sat up and looked quite surprised.
"There's a ball here!" she said; "why has n't any one told me?"
"Will you dance with me?" asked the incense-burner.
"You are a nice one to dance with, I'm sure!" she said, and turned her back upon him. So she sat down on the drawer and thought that one of the flowers would be sure to come and engage her, but no one came; then she coughed, hem! hem! hem! but no one came for all that. The incense-burner danced all by himself, and he did n't do it at all badly!
As none of the flowers seemed to notice Sophia, she let herself fall with a thump from the drawer right down on the floor, and caused quite a commotion; all the flowers came running round her asking if she had hurt herself, and they were all so nice to her, especially the flowers that had been lying in her bed. But she had not hurt herself at all, and all Ida's flowers thanked her for her beautiful bed, and said they loved her very much; they led her into the middle of the floor, where the moon was shining, and danced with her, while the other flowers formed a circle round them. Sophia was now very pleased and said they might keep her bed; she did not at all mind lying in the drawer.
But the flowers said: "We are very much obliged to you, but we cannot live very long! To-morrow we shall be quite dead, but tell little Ida she must bury us in the garden where the canary bird is lying; then we shall grow up again in the summer and be prettier than ever!"
"No, you must not die!" said Sophia, and then she kissed the flowers.
Just then the door of the next room flew open, and a lot of beautiful flowers came dancing in. Ida could not make out where they came from; they must be all the flowers from the king's palace. First of all came two lovely roses, with their little golden crowns; they were the king and the queen. Then came the most beautiful stocks and carnations, bowing on all sides; they had brought music with them. Large poppies and peonies were blowing pea-shells till they were quite red in the face. The blue-bells and the little white snowdrops tinkled as if they had bells on. The music was very funny! Then there came many other flowers, and they all danced; the blue violets and the red hearts-eases, the daisies and the lilies of the valley. And all the flowers kissed one another; it was such a pretty sight!
At last the flowers said good night to each other and little Ida stole back to her bed, where she dreamed of all that she had seen.
When she got up next morning, she went at once to the little table to see if the flowers were still there. She pulled aside the curtains of the little bed, and there they all lay, but they were quite faded, more so than they were the day before. Sophia lay in the drawer, where she had put her; she looked very sleepy. "Can you remember what you were to tell me?" said little Ida, but Sophia looked very stupid and did not say a single word.
"You are not at all kind," said Ida, "and yet they all danced with you." So she took a little cardboard box, on which were painted beautiful birds; she opened it and put the dead flowers into it.
"That will make a pretty coffin for you!" she said, "and when my Norwegian cousins come here, they shall help me to bury you in the garden, so that you can grow up next summer and be prettier than ever!"
Her Norwegian cousins were two fine boys, whose names were Jonas and Adolph; their father had given them each a new cross-bow, and they had brought these with them to show Ida. She told them about the poor flowers that were dead, and they were allowed to bury them. Both the boys went first with their cross-bows on their shoulders, and little Ida followed behind with the dead flowers in the beautiful box. A little grave was dug in the garden. Ida first kissed the flowers and then laid them in the box in the grave, while Adolph and Jonas shot with their cross-bows over it, for they had neither guns nor cannons.
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- ↑ The Shrove-tide rod is generally a three-branched flower-decoration, made of paper, about twelve to eighteen inches in height.