Violet was the most delightful little girl. All day long she was dancing and singing. Every morning she rose early to watch the sunrise, while she protected the violets, which she was named after, and which were her greatest friends. She hoped some day to travel all over the world to see her little friends throughout the earth.
One cheerful summer morning she dreamed that she was in a huge garden surrounded by violets, when suddenly some one put something on her head. She awoke directly just in time to see a little boy, quite full of sunshine, standing by her side with a huge straw hat, which he had thrown on her head.
“Will you go into the world with me to discover a treasure?” him asked.
“Do let’s go,” cried Violet. “My violets are everywhere; we’ll not tire,” and she jumped up for joy.
“I am but a poor boy only just out of the school and from cort, and have no money,” said the boy, doubtfully.
“Have we not the world, the sky, and the thousand blessings of the sunshine? That is money,” said Violet, laughing, for she took him to be quite a funny fellow.
“But that can never do. Suppose we meet with an inn, there we cannot get any thing,” he insisted.
“Do not be afraid; we will trust to our stars,” replied Violet. “It always produces something, something or somebody, either here or there,” and so saying she put her violet in her hair, whilst the sun penetrated the chest put so quilt over with grass. “We will also carry the treasure with us?” she asked.
The boy, now called Amaryllis, and Violet soon filled their little boat with everything they could need during their travels.
“Now that all is done,” said Amaryllis, “take it with both hands, lift it high above your head, and before you know it you will find yourself wherever you wish to be. See! the wind blows, and a moment later we shall be across! Come!”
And off they went across and across; that is why Amaryllis put the sails of the boat close up, so that it should not hurt the people.
They crossed a large lake, and at the edges of the banks there grew quantities of fresh daisies and violets. A little wooden boat lay on the shore, a light breeze drove them towards the shore. The two friends leapt into the other boat amid the flowers.
“Now give me your hand, and take off your shoe for good luck!” said the boy companion.
And now their trouble began; violet flowers covered the daisies turned into so many violets. Round about the straggling growth were violets refrains giving which showed by their own self-colored leaves that they were she-women. Here were violets and daisies without cease. There were violets like health-lights sending out rays like dials, violets and daisies.
At last they were in the middle of the flower continent, where hundreds of violets were mingled, blossoming, dying, and spreading joy and sorrow according to the two seasons: summer and winter.
But this place was large enough. Stretching upwards, you can fancy how beautiful it was. There were mountains and down-roots, ever so many trees, violets swimming in the river as well as daisies and violets wrapped up and driven by the wind, all sorts that nature can produce distinguishable from one another.Ice there, and pits there, known only to those violet people who at once knew how to pass on to the other side through the color.
Amaryllis, at every step that he took in the region of violets and daisies bending before him delivering up their contents, the richest treasures.Violet and Amaryllis never for an hour doubted of its richness gleaming at them, in but they saw dead ones in heaps, what had death the mourning daisy as far as feared them.
When this meadow was left behind, they entered a large wood, which made their legs ache of strange plants or creepers they saw, just lilies and violets.
His companion looked as much astonished as violet herself.
They resolved to pass the night in the meadow, building a hut of the flowers that stood nearest. They prayed to all the good angels who were sitting in a circle at their feet, and told them how unreasonable they were in loading upon them one at once all their trifles, silks, rich coverings, old watches. And the angels thought too that they had really too many bags of old knives, forks, and spoons. Among those old things that were longer of use than they, Jonathan and all his people never felt tired of playing with, as it afforded them both. They wanted nothing, either food, money, or clothes; they had only to breathe before the drawers or cupboards, and whatever they wished was there.
Seven large log-cabins formed their heels just here and there they were mingled with beautiful roses.Violet and Amaryllis passed the evening joyfully amidst those old things that were not even knives, for they surely were something better.
“Between ourselves,” said Amaryllis, laughing, “it seems, as I must observe, that the narratives of mothers and grandmothers are not amorous.”