THE TRANSPLANTED FLOWER 
34 ^ 
passed through the gardens filled with beautiful flowers. 
“ Which shall we take with us and transplant into the 
kingdom of heaven?” asked the angel. 
There stood a slender, lovely rose-bush, only some 
wicked hand had broken the stem, so that all its sprigs, 
loaded with half-open buds, were withering around. 
“Poor rose-bush!” said the child; “let’s take it, in 
order that it may be able to bloom above, in God’s king- 
dom.” 
And the angel took it, and kissed the child for its kind 
intention ; and the little one half-opened its eyes. They 
plucked some of the gay, ornamental flowers; but took 
likewise the despised buttercup and the wild pansy. 
“Now we have plenty of flowers,” said the child, and 
the angel nodded assent; but he did not yet fly upward 
to God. It was night, and all was quiet; they remained 
in the large town, and hovered over one of the narrow 
streets, where lay heaps of straw, ashes, and sweepings. 
There lay fragments of plates, pieces of plaster of Paris, 
rags, and old hats, and all sorts of things that had become 
shabby. 
And amidst this heap the angel pointed to the broken 
fragments of a flower-pot, and to a lump of mould that 
had fallen out of it, and was kept together by the roots 
of a large, withered field-flower, which, being worthless, 
had been flung into the street. 
“ Y/e will take it with us,” said the angel; “and I will 
tell you why as we fly along.” 
And as they flew, the angel related as follows : 
“ In yon narrow street a poor, sickly boy lived in a 
lonely cellar. He had been bed-ridden from his child- 
hood. In his best days he could just walk on crutches 
up and down the room a couple of times; but that was 
all. During some days in summer the sun just shone for 
about half an hour on the floor of the cellar ; and when 
the poor boy sat and warmed himself in its beams, and 
he saw the red blood through his delicate fingers, that he 
held before his face, then he considered that he had been 
abroad that day. All he knew of the forest and its beau- 
tiful spring verdure was from the first green sprig of beech 
that his neighbour’s son used to bring him; and he would 
hold it over his head, and dream that he was under the 
beech trees, amid the sunshine and the carol of birds. 
