Page:Little Ellie and Other Tales (1850).djvu/142

Rh ever, only looked very stupid, and did not answer a word.

“You are not at all good,” said Ida, “and yet all the flowers asked you to dance with them.”

Then she chose a little box of pasteboard from among her playthings; it was painted with birds, and in it she laid the withered flowers.”

“That shall be your coffin,” she said; “and when my cousins from Norway come to see me, they shall go to your funeral in the garden; so that next summer you may bloom again, and grow more beautiful than you were this year.”

The cousins from Norway were two merry boys, Jonas and Esben. Their father had just made each of them a present of a bow and arrows, which they brought with them to show to Ida. She told them all about the poor flowers that were dead, and that she was going to bury in the garden. The two boys went before with the bows on their shoulders, and little Ida followed with the dead flowers in the pretty little