rnation. It was saying, 'You are so beautiful, and I
love you with all my heart!' But the professor doesn't like that sort of
thing, and he rapped the nettle on her leaves, which are her fingers;
but she stung him, and since then he has never dared to touch a nettle."

"Ha! ha!" laughed little Ida, "that is very funny."

"How can one put such stuff into a child's head?" said a tiresome
councilor, who had come to pay a visit. He did not like the student and
always used to scold when he saw him cutting out the droll pasteboard
figures, such as a man hanging on a gibbet and holding a heart in his
hand to show that he was a stealer of hearts, or an old witch riding on
a broomstick and carrying her husband on the end of her nose. The
councilor could not bear such jokes, and he would always say, as now:
"How can any one put such notions into a child's head? They are only
foolish fancies."

But to little Ida all that the student had told her was very
entertaining, and she kept thinking it over. She was sure now that her
pretty yesterday's flowers hung their heads because they were tired, and
that they were tired because they had been to the ball. So she took them
to the table where stood her toys. Her doll lay sleeping, but Ida said
to her, "You must get up, and be content to sleep to-night in the table
drawer, for the poor flowers are ill and must have your bed to sleep in;
then perhaps they will be well again by to-morrow."

And she at once took the doll out, though the doll looked vexed at
giving up her cradle to the flowers.

Ida laid the flowers in the doll's bed and drew the coverlet quite over
them, telling them to lie still while she made some tea for them to
drink, in order that they might be well next day. And she drew the
curtains about the bed, that the sun might not shine into their eyes.

All the evening she thought of nothing but what the student had told
her; and when she went to bed herself, she ran to the window where her
mother's tulips and hyacinths stood. She whispered to them, "I know very
well that you are going to a ball to-night." The flowers pretended not
to understand and did not stir so much as a leaf, but that did not
prevent Ida from knowing what she knew.

When she was in bed she lay for a long time thinking how delightful it
must be to see the flower dance in the king's castle, and said to
herself, "I wonder if my flowers have really been there." Then she fell
asleep.

* *