She used to long for the cat to get him.
"You ought to be such a happy rose!" the merle had said to her,
one day. "There is no rose so strong and healthy as you are,
except the briers."
And from that day she had hated him. The idea of naming those
hedgerow brier roses in the same breath with her!
You would have seen in that moment of her rage a very funny sight
had you been there; nothing less funny than a rose tree trying to
box a blackbird's ears!
But, to be sure, you would only have thought the wind was blowing
about the rose, so you would have seen nothing really of the
drollery of it all, which was not droll at all to Rosa Damascena,
for a wound in one's vanity is as long healing as a wound from a
conical bullet in one's body. The blackbird had not gone near her
after that, nor any of his relations and friends, and she had had
a great many shooting and flying pains for months together, in
consequence of aphides' eggs having been laid inside her stem--
eggs of which the birds would have eased her long before if they
had not been driven away by her haughty rage.
However, she had been almost glad to have some ailment. She had
called it aneurism, and believed it made her look refined and
interesting. If it would only have made her pale! But it had not
done that: she had remained of the richest rose color.
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