In among the green bushes and trees ran the brook¹. Tall, straight-growing rushes stood along its banks, and whispered to the wind. Out in the middle of the water floated the water-lily, with its white flower and its broad green leaves.

 

Generally it was quite calm on the brook. But when, now and again, it chanced that the wind took a little turn over it, there was a rustle² in the rushes, and the water-lily sometimes ducked completely under the waves. Then its leaves were lifted up in the air and stood on their edges, so that the thick green stalks that came up from the very bottom of the stream found that it was all they could do to hold fast.

 

All day long the larva of the dragon-fly was crawling up and down the water-lily's stalk.

 

"Dear me, how stupid it must be to be a water-lily!" it said, and peeped up at the flower.

 

"You chatter³ as a person of your small mind might be expected to do," answered the water-lily. "It is just the very nicest thing there is."

 

"I don't understand that," said the larva. "I should like at this moment to tear myself away, and fly about in the air like the big, beautiful dragon-flies."

 

"Pooh!" said the water-lily. "That would be a funny kind of pleasure. No; to lie still on the water and dream, to bask⁴ in the sun, and now and then to be rocked up and down by the waves—there's some sense in that!"

 

The larva sat thinking for a minute or two.

 

"I have a longing⁵ for something greater," it said at last. "If I had my will, I would be a dragon-fly. I would fly on strong, stiff wings along the stream, kiss your white flower, rest a moment on your leaves, and then fly on."

 

"You are ambitious," answered the water-lily, "and that is stupid of you. One knows what one has, but one does not know what one may get. May I, by the way, make so bold as to ask you how you would set about becoming a dragon-fly? You don't look as if that was what you were born for. In any case you will have to grow a little prettier, you gray, ugly thing."

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