Five Peas from a Pod

" said the mother, but she didn't believe it would happen; yet she was careful to strengthen with a little stick the green plant that had given her daughter such happy thoughts about life, so that it wouldn't be broken by the wind. She tied a piece of string to the window sill and to the upper part of the frame, so that the vine could have something to wind around as it shot up. And this it did. You could see every day that it was growing.

"Look, it has a blossom!" said the woman one morning; and now she had not only the hope, but also the belief, that the little sick girl would get well. She recalled that lately the child had talked more cheerfully and that the last few mornings she had risen up in bed by herself and had sat there and looked with sparkling eyes at the little pea garden with its one single plant. The following week the sick child for the first time sat up for over an hour. Joyous, she sat there in the warm sunshine; the window was opened, and outside stood a fully blown pink pea blossom. The little girl bent her head down and gently kissed the delicate leaves. This was just like a festival day.

"Our Lord Himself planted the pea, and made it thrive, to bring hope and joy to you, my blessed child, and to me, too!" said the happy mother, and smiled at the flower, as if to a good angel from God.

But now the other peas! Well, the one that flew out into the wide world crying, "Catch me if you can!" fell into the gutter of the roof and landed in a pigeon's crop, where it lay like Jonah in the whale. The two lazy ones got just that far, for they also were eaten by pigeons, and that's being of real use. But the fourth pea, who wanted to shoot up to the sun, fell into a gutter and lay for days and weeks in the dirty water, where it swelled up amazingly.

"I'm becoming so beautifully fat!" said the pea. "I'm going to burst, and I don't think any pea can, or ever did, go farther than that. I am the most remarkable of the five from that pod!"

And the gutter agreed with it.