Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/147

Rh "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 Rh