Once upon a time, in a small village surrounded by lush green hills, there lived a little girl named Lucy. Lucy was a very special child; she loved to play outside, especially in the garden where her parents grew all sorts of vegetables and flowers. Lucy would always beg her mommy, “Oh, mommy, can you please give me just a little corner of the garden where I can plant some flowers of my own?”
One sunny day in spring, Lucy’s mother had some magic seeds to plant in the vegetable garden. Lucy begged, “Oh, mommy, can I help you plant the seeds? Please, please?”
“All right, darling, just this once,” said her mother.
While her mother hurried to get a basket in which to put the seeds, Lucy opened up the little paper in which they had been kept; but before she had time to shut it again, the wind carried six of the seeds out of her hand and away into the next garden. She ran after them, but they hid themselves so quickly that she could not find one of them.
When her mother came back she said: “I am sure that the seeds have gone under the grass at the bottom of Madam Tice’s garden. Would you like to run into her house and ask her if you may look for them there?”
Now, Madam Tice was a very old lady, who had a garden with six little beds, with stones all around them. In the middle of the garden there was a little house for birds to build their nests in, and at the top of this house was a fine weathercock, which Madamn Tice declared was the most intelligent thing in the whole garden, and the only thing which never went to sleep from the morning till night.
After a Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lucy went into Madam Tice’s garden to ask about her six escapees, and she told her all about them.
“Well, I cannot tell whether they are in my garden or not,” said Madam Tice, “but you can search for them, and if you find them, I will give you six old flowerpots of mine, which I do not want. But be careful. When you have filled the pots with good soil and planted the seeds, take care of them, for they are six magic seeds.”
“Magic seeds?” said Lucy, jumping with delight; for she did so love reading fairy stories, and there were always magic seeds in fairy stories. “Oh, I will take great care of them! But what shall I do if the flowers come upwards instead of downwards, as they do when the wind blows them out of the ground?”
“Then you must make downwards up into the sky,” said Madam Tice, for she was an old lady with strange ideas; “but you will not have to do with because the flowers will behave themselves. See, here is an aeroplane to put the seeds in. It is simpler than a paper, and besides, the seeds will not fall out of it.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Lucy. And giving Madam Tice her promise to be very careful, she ran as fast as she could into the next garden, where she crawled on her hands and knees to look for her lost seeds.
Now Lucy’s clothes were not clean, and Madam Tice happened to see her head peeping out from her evergreens. This made her very angry, and she called to her gardener, “John, quick, give me your big watering-can.”
“Oh, you naughty girl!” shrieked Madam Tice as she emptied the full can of water over Lucy and the garden, “You must not crawl about in my garden in that state! Come out this moment!”
And she ran to the back of the garden to crawl out of the embrasure of the wall; while the gardener carried her to the kitchen door, where her wet clothes, and her blinking frightened eyes showed plainly that she had no intention of asking for six magic seeds again.
Never mind! The next winter, when no flowers could be planted, Madamn Tice often sent Lucy as a penance to dig her garden, if only to show that her narrow-mindedness could not conquer her good savoir faire. So she dug and watered and turned over the soil, and brought and carried stones, and so did the gardener. Only Lucy did it all for nothing, while the gardener received sixpence every Saturday.
But Lucy was always satisfied, for she only turned round to the seedlings to tell them how happy they were without this reward. The six seedlings rejoiced on their side; for they did be honest little seedlings, and grew and shot up higher and higher till they were so tall that they had to stand on their tiptoes, for fear the doves in Madam Tice’s dovecot should get their heads under for fear of at breaking the necks with their wings.
As each flower got taller than his neighbour, he bent over till he looked as though he had on old-fashioned three-cornered hat, and each flower was tired out of walking round his brother.
At last when they happened to leave off growing, Lucy saw them from a distance, but was vexed at being so tired. Then she desired the bouquets to be put in mahogany, round, candlesticks before the drawing-room windows, being always tired of the row which her neighbours kept them in. Then she put each seed on the mantlepiece, so that the sun should only LeMedilleand this angularity of growth, without getting over their shoulders, by the butterflies which each time came in to drink the dew from their glasses soon grew as round and beetle-body as balloons.
Now madam Tice was afraid of this gradual expansion, so she hid herself in a corner near her dovecot with her spectacles to see with certainty; for she thought she would recognize her old pots, if she saw her cards. But all of a little fellowed each other in the grass, where they were most shoulder to shoulder.
At last, seeing nothing in this corner, she threw herself so hard against the wall of the green-house that the weathercock experienced a veritable sick-fitting, and all doves and sparrows flew over her and hid themselves on roofs, and parapets, and door knocker, from fear of broaching themselves over the nether millstone.
“My good man,” cried she the gardener, who came in fear and trembling to prevent her blowing herself right away with fury, “just go and see if my storm -glass flag is visibly un-altered. The weathercock’s neck is broken! And those little beasts from the bottom of the garden have split themselves down their stomachs with laughing. Run and measure their bodies, legs, and head, and change them correctly at the back, for they will certainly not divide in the belly.”
The six magic seeds had answered splendidly! They had worked miracles and made Lucy’s six flower pots the finest in the whole country.
In a few days they were all in full bloom; and then came trouble, for all the children were mad to get a bit of anything, and it killed all the flowers, roots and all.
But Madamn Tice was still happy, for she had sharply punished all her seedlings, and they would never repeat their conduct if she gave them into Lucy’s prudent hands.