got hurt nor nothin'.
And the plant wa'n't lookin' out for any danger, when all of a suddent
there come a little bit of a snap, and the slimsy little pink stem
broke, and the little berry fell and rolled away, and, 'fore you could
say "Jack Robinson," 't was clean gone out o' sight. I can't begin to
tell ye how that plant took on. Seem 's if she'd die, or go ravin'
crazy. It's only folks that has lost jest what they set most by on airth
that can understand about it, I s'pose. She wouldn't b'leeve it fust
off; she 'most knowed she'd wake up and feel her little berry a-holdin'
close to her, hangin' on her, snugglin' up to her under the shady
leaves. The other plants 'round there tried to chirk her up and help
her. One on 'em told her how it had lost all its little berries itself,
a long spell back, and how it had some ways stood it and got over it.
"But they wa'n't like mine," thinks the poor plant. "There never, never
was no berry like mine, with its pretty figger, its pinky, slim little
neck, and its soft, smooth-feelin' skin." And another plant told her
mebbe her berry was saved from growin' up a trouble to her, gettin' bad
and hard, with mebbe a worm inside on it, to make her ashamed and sorry.
"Oh, no, no!" thinks the mother plant. "My berry'd never got bad and
hard, and I'd 'a' kep' any worm from touchin' its little white heart."
Not a single thing the plant-folks said to her done a mite o' good.
Their talk only worried her and pestered her, when she jest wanted to be
let alone, so's she could think about her little berry all to herself.

Just where the berry used to hang, and where the little pinky stem broke
off, there was a sore place, a sort o' scar, that ached and smarted all
day and all night, and never, never healed up. And bimeby the poor plant
got all wore out with the achin' and the mournin' and the missin' and
she 'peared to feel her heart all a-dryin' up and stoppin', and her
leaves turned yeller and wrinkled, and--she was dead. She couldn't live
on, ye see, without her little berry.

They called it bein' dead, folks did, and it looked like it, for there
she lay without a sign of life for a long, long, long spell. 'Twas for
days and weeks and months anyway. But it didn't seem so long to the
mother plant. She shet up her eyes, feelin' powerful tired and lonesome,
and the next thing she knowed she opened 'em again, and she was wide
awoke. She hardly knowed herself, though, she was so fresh and juicy and