She thought it was her happiness
that stifled her; in real matter of fact it was the tight bands in
which the gardener had bound her.
"Oh, what joy!" she thought, though she still felt very
uncomfortable, but not for the world would she ever have admitted
it to the Banksiae.
The gardener had tied a tin tube on to her, and it was heavy and
cumbersome; but no doubt, she said to herself, the thing was
fashionable, so she bore the burden of it very cheerfully.
The Banksiae asked her how she felt, but she would not deign even
to reply; and when a friendly blackbird, who had often picked
grubs off her leaves, came and sang to her, she kept silent: a
Rosa Indica was far above a blackbird.
"Next time you want a caterpillar taken away, he may eat you for
ME!" said the blackbird, and flew off in a huff.
She was very ungrateful to hate the black-bird so, for he had been
most useful to her in doing to death all the larvae of worms and
beetles and caterpillars and other destroyers which were laid
treacherously within her leaves. The good blackbird, with many
another feathered friend, was forever at work in some good deed of
the kind, and all the good, grateful flowers loved him and his
race. But to this terribly proud and discontented Rosa Damascena
he had been a bore, a common creature, a nuisance, a monster--any
one of these things by turns, and sometimes all of them
altogether.
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