58 Lily and Water-Lily.

 

They seemed to have lost even the remembrance of
Mother Earth’s command now; they seemed to have
forgotten even to besorry. They plucked the flowers
recklessly wherever they went, and then left them,
almost as soon as they were plucked, to wither and’
die upon the ground where they had lately bloomed
so contentedly.

Iris and columbine, blue hyacinth and golden
daffodils, buttercups and dark-eyed narcissus, were
cast aside in a way that the children could not have
believed possible in the days when it was their
pleasure and their pride to be the friends and
guardians of all the things that lived together with
them on the earth.

As they roamed along the banks of the stream,
and through the meadows and the woods, tokens of
their cruel destruction greeted them on every side,
and, though they kept repeating to one another that
there were still such crowds of flowers left a-blooming
that one could not miss those that were gone, they
did not feel at all happy when they passed by and