IT was on the same evening that Prue and Davy asked for the other
story. And of course the Chief Gardener had to tell it, for he had
promised, and little Prue, especially, didn't like to put off anything
that had been promised. So this is the story that the Chief Gardener
told:
"The Pulse family is a very large one. I don't know just where the
first old great-grandfather Pulse ever did come from, but it is thought
to be some place in Asia, a great country of the far East. It may be
that the first Pulse lived in the Garden of Eden, though whether as a
tree or a vine or a shrub, or only as a little plant, we can't tell
now."
"I think it's going to be a fairy story," said Prue, settling down to
listen. "Is it, Papa? A real, true fairy story?"
"Well, perhaps it is a sort of a fairy story, and I'll try to tell it
just as truly as I can. Anyway, the story goes, that a long time after
the Garden of Eden was ruined and the Pulse family started west, there
were two cousins, and these two cousins were vines, though whether they
were always vines, or only got to be vines so they could travel faster,
I do not know. Some of their relations were trees then, and are now;
the locust tree out in the corner of the yard is one of them."
Davy looked up, and was about to ask a question. The Chief Gardener
went on.
"The cousins I am talking about, being vines, traveled quite fast in
the summer-time, but when it came winter, they lay down for a long nap,
and only when spring came they roused up and traveled on. One of them
was a very fine fellow, with gay flowers that had a sweet smell, and
people loved him for his beauty and fragrance. The other brought only
greenish-white flowers, not very showy, but some thought him far more
useful than his pretty cousin, for he gave the people food as he passed
along.
"So they journeyed on, down by the way of the Black Sea, which you will
know about when you are a little older, and still farther west until
at last the pretty Pulse cousin and the plain but useful Pulse cousin
had spread their families all over Europe, and were called P's, perhaps
because the first letter of their family name began with P. Then by
and by it was spelled p-e-a, and they were called garden-pease and
sweet-pease, and were planted everywhere, one for the lovely flowers,
and the other for food. Now we have them side by side in your windows,
just as they were when they first started on their travels, so very,
very long ago."
"Did they really travel as you have told?" asked Davy, looking into the
fire.
"Well, I have never been able to find any printed history of their
travels, so it may have been something like that."
"They did, didn't they, Papa?" insisted little Prue, who always wanted
to believe every word of every fairy story. "They went hand in hand,
just as Davy and I do when we go walking, didn't they?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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