Once upon a time in a magical valley, there lived a little dragon named Daisy. She was smaller than all her brothers and sisters, who used to tease her because she couldn’t fly yet. Every day, they spread their beautiful wings and glided high up into the blue sky. But poor Daisy was too scared, despite dreaming so often about flying. She would lay on a rock in the sun, watching her family soar, crying big tears, which often made her little mossy nest quite wet.
One starry night, when all the dragons had gone to bed, Daisy was lying awake, thinking how pleasant it would be if she could flutter up into the dark sky. “Oh dear,” she thought, “my wings never will grow! They are so small already.” Then Daisy hopped out of her nest and went to the brook, which rippled and winked as the stars reflected themselves in its soft water. Gazing at her face in the stream, she saw two grand little wings growing out of her back.
“Oh, if they would only grow large enough to let me fly like my brothers and sisters!” sighed Daisy.
Just then her friend Rollo the raven came hopping along. He was the first to discover Daisy’s new wings and said, “I say, Daisy! That is right noble; it will make you a flier.”
“But they are too small, Rollo!” answered Daisy. “It will take such a time for them to grow.”
“Oh, that’s the way to speak,” quoth Rollo. “Patience is a good thing and is soon learned. But you have good wings, and I doubt not they will serve you well in time. You know you can crack a nut, Daisy? Clutch it with your strong little parsnips and give it a blow, just as you would to wake a rooster. Then you’ll find you have strength in your wings that you little think of. Try!”
So the next day Daisy paid great attention to what Rollo had said and found that she had strong wings and could fly a little way. Then Rollo the sage told her she need not mind whether they were big or little if she always thought of Rollo while she was flying. “Then close your wings tight, and come to me. The rest is my business.”
So off went Daisy, flapping her wings, and fluttering up into the sky. When she thought she could get no higher, she suddenly closed her wings tight, and began to drop. Down, down, she sank; and her heart beat with faintness as she closed her eyes. But like a gigantic feather-bed, all of a sudden, Rollo the raven rose up beneath her, and Daisy alighted on it very gently. Down it sank, like a feather afloat in the water, far below.
So day by day Daisy’s strength increased; and as she became more powerful, she seemed to grow too, and at last actually obtained beautiful large wings. Daisy was most jubilant and clapped her claws because she was no longer teased by the other dragons.
But the winds were so cold, and she had to fly so high after her brothers and sisters that Daisy’s wings began to ache. “Oh! I can’t any longer,” she said, when the poor wings dropped by her side. “I must come down and rest.”
Luckily, a mossy rock was near, into the moss of which Daisy nestled her tired little limbs. Suddenly, a puff of wind caused the flake of soft moss to tremble, which, as it rocked Daisy, hummed:
“When down I sink on Earth’s soft breast,
And Nature cradles me to rest.
Whether I wake or never more,
I’m in my mother’s arms, Ashore.”
“Ah! That is a lovely lullaby,” said Daisy, “and fine poetical language.”
“You have brought me here,” it went on “a pretty way up to the sky. ‘Tis good soft moss-will you take a little crumb of sleep? So lie just a moment on your warning Aunt, and let my elephant’s softest pillow lay beside your pandemonium bed,” quoth the moss, as he seemed to rock Daisy again.
So Daisy nestled side by side with the most mossy part of the rock, and dropped asleep; but her brothers and sisters, who were returning toward homeward, sighted her and would fain have wakened her.
“Do not wake her, dear brothers and sisters,” said Pierre, the best musician among them, “You all know the song:
“When down I sink on Earth’s soft breast,
And Nature cradles me to rest.
Whether I wake or never more,
I’m in my mother’s arms, Ashore.”
Ah! dear dame, you need not take me in your green arms, or even rocky bosom, nor yet in a hen’s warm nest; where four little sturdy wing-buddies of Nature are to be found in every man’s noble breast.
Saying thus, Daisy’s elder sister alighted, but instead of four little strong durable wing-buddies in the noble breast thereof, she found in our good, well-deserving dame there was space enough for a whole family of young broods; but croon they would not, which was sad for so good a dame. Four mutual friends which hereafter go in four cockle shells on outings, just up and down, here and there, without grumbling or making any more fuss about it than is absolutely necessary, at last sighed:
“We feel so happy, oh, so happy;
The rest is not worth naming.”
So they went off, with this frightfully mundane phrasing on their minds, and no jokes at goodwill beside. And Daisy flew all the way back to her rocky nest, for moss here brings trouble enough to the Russian mariners on our waters, and one sleeping Devil is too much, even on Evangelical shipboard.
And what else can I tell? Oh yes! If they please, we will have a dialogue about men’s mode of sleep, and tell how the unwelcome guest that comes to bed with them — controversies over corporeal attaché; but then they’d get angry, while now they are all contented and well pleased with us, anyway.