y flower; and, numerous as
they were, it still seemed to Gerda that one was wanting, though she
did not know which. One day while she was looking at the hat of the old
woman painted with flowers, the most beautiful of them all seemed to her
to be a rose. The old woman had forgotten to take it from her hat
when she made the others vanish in the earth. But so it is when one's
thoughts are not collected. "What!" said Gerda. "Are there no roses
here?" and she ran about amongst the flowerbeds, and looked, and looked,
but there was not one to be found. She then sat down and wept; but her
hot tears fell just where a rose-bush had sunk; and when her warm tears
watered the ground, the tree shot up suddenly as fresh and blooming as
when it had been swallowed up. Gerda kissed the roses, thought of her
own dear roses at home, and with them of little Kay.

"Oh, how long I have stayed!" said the little girl. "I intended to look
for Kay! Don't you know where he is?" she asked of the roses. "Do you
think he is dead and gone?"

"Dead he certainly is not," said the Roses. "We have been in the earth
where all the dead are, but Kay was not there."

"Many thanks!" said little Gerda; and she went to the other flowers,
looked into their cups, and asked, "Don't you know where little Kay is?"

But every flower stood in the sunshine, and dreamed its own fairy tale
or its own story: and they all told her very many things, but not one
knew anything of Kay.

Well, what did the Tiger-Lily say?

"Hearest thou not the drum? Bum! Bum! Those are the only two tones.
Always bum! Bum! Hark to the plaintive song of the old woman, to the
call of the priests! The Hindoo woman in her long robe stands upon the
funeral pile; the flames rise around her and her dead husband, but the
Hindoo woman thinks on the living one in the surrounding circle; on him
whose eyes burn hotter than the flames--on him, the fire of whose eyes
pierces her heart more than the flames which soon will burn her body to
ashes. Can the heart's flame die in the flame of the funeral pile?"

"I don't understand that at all," said little Gerda.

"That is my story," said the Lily.

What did the Convolvulus say?

"Projecting over a narrow mountain-path there hangs an old feudal
castle. Thick evergreens grow on the dilapidated walls, and around the
altar, where a lovely maiden is standing: she bends over the railing and
looks out upon the rose. No fresher rose hangs on the branches than