There is ever so much fun in a pansy bed. If you have never had one, ask
your papa or mamma to let you have one this summer. A few dozen plants
will give you much pleasure.
There are so many little faces to know among them, and so many little
family groups. Some grin at you like monkeys, others scowl, some seem to
wink, some smile shyly, while others are curious and open-eyed. There is
a white family delicately blue-veined—Colonial Dames, I call them. There
are negroes of the darkest hue, Indians, and those that the sun seems to
have bronzed. There are groups of Chinamen with their little “yellow
kids.” Some are tattooed, and some have striped skin. Many wear ruffled
bonnets, and some have beards. The little clusters are so erect and
alert on a morning after a heavy dew that they seem like families off
for an outing or school children waiting for a snap shot. There are
lovely grandmothers wearing purple caps with white frills, and with
faces though crinkled and wrinkled yet full of smiles and wisdom. There
are sweethearts too, their little heads close together, and they
whisper, whisper when the wind goes by.
What do you think? One day from out of my bowl of pansies which I had
placed on the lunch table skipped two frisky “yellow kids.” I discovered
them hand in hand skipping away. Their little figures were reflected in
the polished surface of the table, and they seemed partners out of a
Virginia reel. As I put them back in the bowl among their elders, I felt
that I had wantonly interrupted a runaway.
Watch how the pansies love the rain! As they seem praying for it with
bent heads in dry weather, so they seem a-quiver with thanksgiving after
a shower.
There are many things you can do with your pansies. First, though, you
must love them. You must teach pussy and the dog not to tramp over them.
Every day you must take off all the faded flowers. You must water them
and weed them. You will enjoy gathering a bouquet daily for the house,
and if anybody is ill, papa or mamma or some one else you love, by all
means carry them a bunch of your pansies.
In midsummer, when the fairies have pitched their tents about the
sweet-scented bed, the blossoms will have become so many that if grandpa
or grandma has a birthday, you can gather seventy or eighty (possibly
ninety if you need so many) for a birthday gift. You will not see the
fairies about the bed, for they come at midnight, but the dew-sprinkled
tents are there, and the cluster of toadstools that the brownies like so
well.
Do not forget to give some flowers to the poor children who stand
outside your gate, and who wish for some for their very own. The
children who have no garden love to look at yours.
Perhaps you have an older sister or brother who paints. If so, they may
like some of your pansies to sketch, and to keep in the house in the
winter when your real ones are tucked under the earth and snow.
You will find several live things in your flower bed; the bees, the
butterflies, and once in a while a humming-bird. Sir Bumble, the bee who
looks so heavy and clumsy, touches lightly the pansies, and the pansies
like to have him about, for he is so lively and cheery, so do not drive
him away. The light yellow and the deep yellow butterflies seem like the
pansies themselves, flying off from their stems for a journey about the
country. Who knows what the butterflies and the bees tell the flowers,
or what messages the flowers send by the flying creatures that pay them
visits? When you have pansy beds of your own perhaps you will be able to
write me some stories, and then perhaps you can tell me what the
butterflies, bees and pansies talk about.
Grace Marion Bryant.